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]

[Cyril TechWebsites]

Absolutely hopeless situation. I pruned all low-performed content, updated more than 50% of my pages, keep doing it, but my traffic only decreases more and more with every day. It's just insanity and looks like a usual crime from Googlers. It's just the assassination of the websites depending on random roulette.

I don't see any logic - a few of my competitors have hundreds (or even thousands) of pages from 2016 year till now, they are absolutely useless these days in "how-to" niche, but those websites recovered from the drop. I believe, Google thinks they are having helpful content? Just insanity. These destructions from Google crossed all the lines, they are acting like a judge, but we don't see any laws. They are doing all they want.

#regulategoogle

[Rlilly]

As Martin Ice Web stated, he is using Amazon to purchase more and more.
Why use Google if you can just go to Amazon..

[RubicCubed]

Why use Google if you can just go to Amazon

Over the years Google trained shoppers to go to Amazon with all the Amazon crowded SERPS. Both Amazon and Google share similar values in monetizing consumers of information, products and services. I don't like Amazon, not just because they are the biggest distributor of Chinese goods, but also because they treat people terrible. Just a week ago workers filed suit against Amazon claiming sweatshop working conditions in the USA. No thanks, I don't want to handle products or packages after Amazon touched them! Since Google's SERPS have mostly Amazon ads, and top spots for organic going to Amazon, where are shoppers like us (that don't like Amazon) to go to search for products?

[news.yahoo.com...]

[edited by: not2easy at 3:59 pm (utc) on Jun 1, 2023]

[ErrlyBird]

It's overall disheartening, the whole thing. Especially for myself who has only been in the SEO world for 2 years. I'm def not as experienced as most of you, but I can def follow along with the trends everyone is seeing. It just makes no sense to me. Incredible gains last year and all of a sudden just huge drops. Like how was our site so helpful for so long to just be terminated to nothing. I jsut don't understand and I fear I may end up having to find a new career before long....

[ichthyous]

We had two days of normal traffic, then yesterday a 26% drop in USA, 40% drop in direct traffic and search was -7%. Today USA is -45% at noon. This is after a large upswing in ranking and visibility, but the traffic is gone again.

You can clearly see when the new regime is in full force as USA traffic will literally halt for hours at a time. There is no way under normal conditions that there would be almost ZERO USA traffic for the prime hours of the day, while UK and other countries are zooming.

I am also seeing a round-robin effect, where traffic will mysteriously disappear from a different set of countries each day. Some days Canada is almost zero, then Australia will suddenly vanish, or UAE, or France. Then next day back to normal.

From the perspective of those of you who are paying for ads, is this new regime increasing conversions? I abandoned paying for ads long ago as it was almost all either fraudulent clicks or completely useless one-page-hit type traffic that never converted. If Google is now shunting all the organic traffic at paid ads shouldn't the ads be performing much better? But are they?

[mosxu]

[similarweb.com...]

OpenAI website more visited than Bing already!

If I may? The trillion dollar company reaction was more of the same thing for the 80% of us!

Listen the only way is to open your market up! Let specialists small businesses drive your business not the algo!

Communism v Open Market Place?

[Cyril TechWebsites]

My GSC stats were updated, and I'm seeing a further -10% drop. It's week by week. I'm updating an article, it climbs at the top, then a few weeks pass and it drops even more. I don't see any sense in producing content these days. I believe in a year or two you will be seeing 5 websites from every niche, that will be publishing info on all topics because Google decided they are helpful. I believe this is the end of the free blogging era. I'm absolutely out of ideas on how to stop this "helpful" destruction of my website. I can't do anything and I tried anything I could. I hate Google and I wish every of them to find themselves in the middle of the war, and then make some person come and told that you are now free of your project, and all your content is bu**it. All 10 years of my project I was following all their rules and guidelines, and my website was raising year by year. And then boom, and Google decided that my website is bad. And he didn't take -10 or -20%, they destroyed it to zero. The entire website, all pages, etc. You can't do anything with it. It's just a crime activity we watch and can't do anything. It's funny to see how your visitors give you a thanks in commentaries, tech support of the biggest software linking to your how-tos to make their clients happy, but Google decided - you are bad, and they don't care at all. Wish all Googlers to get what they deserved one time in a court.

[Mestrick]

@ichthyous We are paying for ads, the conversion is nothing compared to how much we are spending. Bait clicks, only consume money. I have Microsoft Clarity for user behavior on the website. There I can compare the number of clicks on Google ads and websites, which comes to almost 40% of what G is showing.

[superclown2]

@ichthyous We are paying for ads, the conversion is nothing compared to how much we are spending. Bait clicks, only consume money. I have Microsoft Clarity for user behavior on the website. There I can compare the number of clicks on Google ads and websites, which comes to almost 40% of what G is showing.

Then why continue throwing good money after bad? I used to send irrefutable evidence to Google that huge numbers of clicks were fraudulent but they charged us for them anyway on the basis that our company (which was paying them megabucks, had professional help in setting up our criteria and was using a massive exclusion list, including every known proxy server and educational IP address in the country) should have factored fraudulent clicks into the amount we bid. There's no real answer to logic like that except walk away, which we did, and we will never go back.

Back on topic .......
I noticed an uptick in business yesterday but since it's the beginning of the month I 'm not surprised and I doubt that it will continue. However a few days ago a normally high performing site produced precisely nothing from Google for about 36 hours. I checked that it was up and running from proxies all over the world and also searched Google for precise text strings on the web pages and yes they showed up (so the site was still in their system) but from their search I got nothing; just the normal traffic level from Bing and Duck. This particular site should have (even after the recent destructive updates) several hundred visits from Google each day but for the first time since Google even surfaced (when it was the best search engine by far - a long time ago) there was nothing. Nada. Zilch.

My conclusion? I reckon it was just a hiccup; these things happen. Judging a trend with results from just a few days is pointless. Even a few months can give no indication of what will happen in the future since some "helpful update" can make the good bad, and the bad good, in the eyes of a monopoly. That's the way it will be until search is finally regulated and there is real competition.

[tangor]

...is finally regulated and there is real competition.

Regulation is never good, and currently there is no competition.

One of those wait and see kind of things!

[Martin Ice Web]

@rubicCubed

No thanks, I don't want to handle products or packages after Amazon touched them!

I am not happy with this neither. But google killed realy all legit and trustworth business sites/shops. Before i spend my money to a scraped site and don´t get my goods, i spend it on amazon. i am now forced to go to amazon. Thanx to google.

There is nothing helpfull in serps right now. Even the silly "additional questions" block is silly.
Me as a thinking human, I want my 10 blue links back, so i can decide on my own if i visit a site or not. I don´t want to get bombed with ads, sub-sub verticals and youTube.
I want to have a big selection of websites. Not just 2 or 3 sites.

Today started, lets say: OK. At 11am google decided that we reached our level and totally cut of all traffic.

[superclown2]

Regulation is never good,

The alternative to regulation is anarchy, in which the strongest trample over everyone else. Pretty much what is happening when one single company decides on the success or failure of just about every Internet business in the world, whilst extracting hitherto unimaginable sums of money from them.

Sure there is no real competition at the moment but times change.

In the meanwhile on several UK mobile SERPs I checked this morning I saw:
4 'sponsored' ads (the first often in 3 separate sections, making it look as though they were different ads)
1 organic result (a heavy ad spender, naturally)
Refine this search
1 organic result
PAA
Business
1 organic result
Related searches
4 ads
5 organic results
4 ads

Anyone optimising for mobile may wish to rethink that policy.

[Dooku]

Regulation is never good, and currently there is no competition.

This is the typical statement which has been ingrained into your brain by decades of false brainwashing from the same top 1% in your society that claims "trickle down economy is good for the lower income group". While all the evidence irrefutably shows that this is the greatest imaginable BS.

Lack of competition is a product derived from lack of regulation. This has now been proven over and over and over ....ad infinitum.
With "thinking" like that, google has nothing to worry about.

AI is here to stay. This does not mean it's hopeless to run any kind of website.
I always "copy" the very best websites in any sector and considerably improve whatever they are doing that already works.
No, this is not copying other peoples work, because what I provide is much more detailed and better and I receive the "thank you" messages to prove it.
The result is that I rank very close to them but they ONLY outrank me because they are well established "authoritative" websites(e.g big players)

NEVER EVER do what google says....only do what you SEE IN THE SERPS THAT IS WORKING!
For example @Cyril TechWebsites, pruning and deleting underperforming but ranking pages is one BIG BS.
Just edit them a bit and interlink them in a LOGICAL way so they support other better performing pages on your website.....always positive results.

[Rlilly]

Regulations is needed for everything @tangor, especially banking and finance, you cannot let man operate freely.. oil drilling especially, railroads and on on or greedy man will destroy everything with out them.. The Republicans hate Regulation for a reason.

[ichthyous]

Then why continue throwing good money after bad? I used to send irrefutable evidence to Google that huge numbers of clicks were fraudulent but they charged us for them anyway on the basis that our company (which was paying them megabucks, had professional help in setting up our criteria and was using a massive exclusion list, including every known proxy server and educational IP address in the country) should have factored fraudulent clicks into the amount we bid. There's no real answer to logic like that except walk away, which we did, and we will never go back.

I found the exact same thing, and Google refused to do anything about it. The sheer arrogance of a MONOPOLY that does have to worry about customers at all...there's another sucker to fleece right behind them. Think about it...all they need is a constant rotation of new users who eventually give up and go away, and their mega-corporate clients that have money to burn to maintain a dominant position and drive out the competition. They don't need to concern themselves with consumer complaints...yet. I do hope that Apple comes into the game...that is the only hope for some real competition to Google's ad-scam.

However a few days ago a normally high performing site produced precisely nothing from Google for about 36 hours. I checked that it was up and running from proxies all over the world and also searched Google for precise text strings on the web pages and yes they showed up (so the site was still in their system) but from their search I got nothing; just the normal traffic level from Bing and Duck. This particular site should have (even after the recent destructive updates) several hundred visits from Google each day but for the first time since Google even surfaced (when it was the best search engine by far - a long time ago) there was nothing. Nada. Zilch.

Zero traffic is unusual, but it kinda matches what I have been posting about hours during the peak times of day where USA traffic stops completely. Traffic continues apace from elsewhere, but USA traffic just stops completely. I understand that the number of ads may be changed on the fly per user, but that still doesn't explain no traffic at all. I havve no idea how Google is accomplishing this feat. I am ranking similarly around the world as well when I check...what I do not check is searching in different languages.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

For example @Cyril TechWebsites, pruning and deleting underperforming but ranking pages is one BIG BS.
Just edit them a bit and interlink them in a LOGICAL way so they support other better performing pages on your website.....always positive results.

I always prefer to update the article, if there is such a possibility. You are absolutely right, and almost every time it gives results. But when during the audit I find a post that has never got backlinks, which didn't climb higher than 40th place in SERPs, and didn't bring any decent amount of traffic — I prefer to delete it, and not waste my time on it.

[ichthyous]

I am seeing more and more evidence that Google is simply rotating which sites get traffic for specific terms. When all of this started right around Easter, My top-performing categories lost up to 90% of their traffic. Those are all highly competitive searches. Then in the past couple of weeks they returned to a more normal level, but some days will just drop completely and inexplicably. For example, three of my top traffic referring terms are down 79%-86% today. They were all at the top this week. The terms are semantically related and I rank #1, #1, #4, #4 for the extremely high volume searches.

So how is it that if my ranking supposedly had not changed (in fact it's higher) that the traffic completely disappears some days? In the case of the post-Easter period it was down for a month or more. It appears to me that Google is simply rotating which sites will rank for these high-volume searches now, it's not just about page layout or number of ads.

[superclown2]

AI is here to stay. This does not mean it's hopeless to run any kind of website.

Absolutely. Not only that, I see open source platforms are springing up already. This is the joy of SEO, it is an ever changing landscape that we have to keep up with and those that can and do might well benefit immensely. If anyone has ideas about how it can help a website I'd love to hear about it - we haven't even scratched the surface of what it can do yet.

The sheer processing power it needs is a huge issue though and I wonder if the likes of Google and Bing will be as enthusiastic about using it for search when they see the huge bills come in, at the same time as clicks on their ads fall. Plus: Google was not only late to the party but they seem to have lost a lot of their most innovative brains recently. I often wonder if this will be yet another spectacular 'other bet' failure for them.

Whether AI (in the form of a chatbot) will be the future of search is yet to be proven. AI could certainly be used to rank websites, weeding out the junk and promoting specialist sites, in which case it could emerge as a benefit to those of us that watch our top quality sites, that provide real original information, or provide products and services that are advertised by big ad buyers, being trumped by those same 'authoritative' sites that have no real expertise in any subject except marketing. At the moment though Google seems to be using it to benefit their profits, rather than provide a decent service to their visitors in the form of the most relevant information.

[tangor]

Regulations only work for those who write them. All the rest suffer by being compelled to "not compete due to regulations". The only "regulation" that makes sense is NO REGULATIONS in the free and open market place. Then again, I recognize being a minority in this belief. :)

[Dooku]

we haven't even scratched the surface of what it can do yet.

I suggest for everyone here to check out the new plugins for Chatgpt4 that are being rolled out on a daily basis now.
Some of those are really genius where you can have chatgpt go online and fetch information in real time instead of relying on training data that is relatively "old".
I predict within a year there will be plugins available that can ALSO do complicated tasks using real time data online without the need for programming.
You can then ditch your expensive Hrefs and Semrush subscriptions.

[christianz]

But there will be far less info available freely online. Because the advertising model will be broken and nobody will be incentivized to feed bots for free.

[superclown2]

I suggest for everyone here to check out the new plugins for Chatgpt4 that are being rolled out on a daily basis now.
Some of those are really genius where you can have chatgpt go online and fetch information in real time instead of relying on training data that is relatively "old".

I foresee a whole mass of specialised search engines, catering for different interests.

So long Google, and thanks for all the fish.

Then again, I recognize being a minority in this belief. :)

This is good. We all learn by listening to other views as well as our own.

[RedBar]

Blimey, I go away for a few days on business and what do I see when I return? The first two days of June and a further 25% loss in traffic, I'm now at 50% of a year ago and -70% of two years ago.

The Net hasn't been a serious business-driver for me, and my industry, for quite some time now and with G simply being a gigantic classified ads site, it is for all intents and purposes in my industry, an almost pointless dinosaur.

I have no doubt that those who are geared-up for these type of sales / enquiries that G may continue to send them traffic so long as they keep paying their "hostage fees" but for many, maybe the majority, since about 2015/16 it's been a thankless task.

[Micha]

Well, I'm experiencing a massive traffic increase on my site right now. The day before yesterday, I had the best day since the website was created and now the traffic from Google continues to rise. Why I do not understand, because as far as I can see, there was no update and we have not changed anything. I'm curious to see how long this will last.

[RubicCubed]

Regulations only work for those who write them.

The same can be said for deregulation. I look to utilities which were deregulated in my state. What providers now offer are contracts with teaser rates. Once the contract expires, the utility rates may double or triple. These providers are banking on many people forgetting to get a new contract, and many do since the providers aren't required to notify rate payers their contract is ending. Since it takes 2-3 months to switch, providers gouge rate payers these months making back lost profits from their teaser rates plus some.

I do find it interesting those who are against regulation often don't share the same opinion when it comes to subsidies. Google has received just under $2 billion in subsidies, while Amazon has received just over $6 billion. I'd guess most of us running websites/online stores here aren't getting subsidies like they are, yet we find ourselves competing with them and forced to pay them for access to consumers because of their taxpayer supported dominance.

[muniz900]

I'm a novice, I'm not an expert, I wanted to ask you for some info, it's normal that before the last Google update my traffic spent more time on my site, and then after the update less time remains, I've noticed these changes many times, with an update more pages are viewed per user, instead with other updates fewer pages are viewed per user, such as traffic changes, do you also notice these variations over time, are they normal? Thanks all.

[ichthyous]

The only "regulation" that makes sense is NO REGULATIONS in the free and open market place.

Sorry, but this is nonsense. That's how we got the robber barons controlling the entire US economy in the 19th and early 20th centuries until the government finally broke up their monopolies and cartels. The result? A huge expansion of economic growth in the 1950's and 1960's.

A total lack of regulation is why we now are in the exact same position with our tech robber barons of the 21st century, and they will almost inevitably face a smash up too. Why? Because too many of society's resources and concentrating in the hands of too few people to the detriment of society at large. In the USA we now have private equity controlling our electrical grids, emergency rooms and nursing homes. Anyplace they can infiltrate their greedy tentacles and gouge the general public they are doing it. The result has been a catastrophe...much worse outcomes and higher death rates than before deregulation and privatization. This is not in question at all, it is a fact...data does not lie.

We now have almost a century of research in economics that shows that an unregulated marketplace ends up choking off opportunities for new/small businesses because the monopolies simply kill them in the cradle. Likewise, the deregulation of Reagan and Thatcher produced huge disparities in income inequality, huge government debts, and dramatically slowed social mobility. One can argue for regulation with the least amount of intervention and the lightest hand, but some sort of regulation and government intervention is always needed.

[ichthyous]

Blimey, I go away for a few days on business and what do I see when I return? The first two days of June and a further 25% loss in traffic, I'm now at 50% of a year ago and -70% of two years ago.

If the website isn't an important source of leads then why bother with it? I wish I could say the same...everything comes through my site. Social media is useless, partnerships with other platforms havve been useless, and I just passed on in person tradeshow that wanted $15,000-$30,000 for a stand at a trade fair. After a lot of research it seems that the consensus was that you are lucky to break even on the expense. No thanks, I will keep that $30k in my account at 5%.

Is this a linear drop you are seeing, or some days higher and then it snaps back down? The general trend since all of this started for me around Easter is also quite a bit down....it's a slow inevitable tick downward in traffic spreading across more territories and across more and more semantically related terms.

That is while my ranking is higher than ever. The traffic is simply not being sent anymore, but some days are much worse than others. Today is very low, as are all Saturdays now. Around once every two weeks or so Google eases up and I get a burst of inquiries, then the door is slammed again.

I do think this is also the economy talking...people have become almost impossibly cheap and unrealistically cost conscious now. It's at the point that I don't even want to respond to their inquiries because they are just a total waste of my time.

[Treud]

Since the early of May, me it’s a net 20% loss and it’s exactly the same pattern of the previous months (a bit lower on week day), Inquiries are super low as well, last month same period (before the drop) was receiving orders/inquiries.
Since almost 2 weeks, it’s totally dead. No mails, no order.
Yesterday was reading an article (in French) telling that Alphabet is holding a share holder meeting and the AI thing will be a core subject as some people in the business (even ChatGPT) starts to freak out that the results may lead to lots of problems (fake results, copyright violation …).
Summer will be hot !

[lemonde.fr...]

www.lemonde.fr « Panique chez Google et les autres Frankenstein de l'IA » CHRONIQUE. Alphabet, maison mère du moteur de recherche, qui tient son assemblée générale vendredi, tente de rattraper Microsoft et ChatGPT dans l'intelligence artificielle. Mais les géniteurs craignent désormais les risques éthiques et commerciaux engendrés par leur créature, analyse Philippe Escande, éditorialiste économique au « Monde ».