July 2023 Google Search Observations

[superclown2]

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.

With the greatest respect - do you not think that Google's monopoly of search has something to do with that? They are the default on just about every major browser and device (something they pay billions of dollars for) and most people out there don't even know that real search engines exist, let alone how to change defaults.

It is easy to be top dog when you're the only one in town. Even if you're a very poor and greedy one.

[edited by: not2easy at 6:34 pm (utc) on Jul 1, 2023]
[edit reason] End of month/New Month split cleanup [/edit]

[RubicCubed]

Google continues to send us traffic from countries we don't sell in or ship to, leading to time wasting inquiries. We have formulated a cut and paste response where we inform the shopper we don't sell/ship to their region and recommend they use another search engine that is not broken like Google. I hope these people take our advice. We will get no traffic or sales from our market (USA) because Google is spamming so many ads.

[RedBar]

Wednesday's traffic almost came back to my new, lower level at 97% with today seemingly continuing in a similar way. July 2022 was my lowest traffic month of 2022 after a 17% drop from June, it will be interesting to see if July 2023 will achieve similar.

[BigKat]

Advertisers running from Google, a new layout or text ads taken offline for another perpetual update in the USA? I'm seeing a different layout today:

All text ads above the fold are gone this morning for some USA product type searches. The first organic result is Amazon followed by the people often ask box then #2-#8 organic results followed by a product ad block of (8) products. To be clear, whatever is happening with this product search layout is HEAVILY weighted to favor Amazon. There are absolutely no small businesses appearing in the organic results and 50% of the product ads are Amazon with the rest being the well known marketplaces that serve to sell/distribute MIC (Made in China) goods.

[mhansen]

@ichthyous - Thank you for that information! Very useful and now I'm going to focus on getting it done. Much appreciated.

[Nutterum]

@rubicCubed - let me take a wild guess : India, Pakistan, Indonesia being the most common? I suggest you outright just ban the countries you don't sell to by IP range and just be done with it.

[ichthyous]

@rubicCubed - let me take a wild guess : India, Pakistan, Indonesia being the most common? I suggest you outright just ban the countries you don't sell to by IP range and just be done with it.

I don't like banning visitors, but unfortunately I had to do it for some countries...Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam and all visits from China using certain user agents. India is limited by a Cloudflare challenge. I don't need these countries perpetually hitting up my back end trying to break in, or submitting form spam etc. I don't get customers from these countries, and by the time they do have legit customers for what I sell I will be retired or dead.

[ichthyous]

I have had better, higher and more consistent traffic since Monday, but it started dropping again last night...especially USA, AU, and CA traffic. Traffic to my home page suddenly dropped this week by 74% and then has stayed suppressed since then, but traffic to other pages has been much higher so it compensated. It seems that this is an endless merry-go-round of constantly assuring that some part of the site drops off a cliff, no matter how well it ranks.

[RedBar]

I always hesitate to submit when this happens BUT I appear to be having a conventionally normal day however will it last and, if so, for how long?

No spikes or surges, solid traffic all day and actually increasing as the USA day progresses ... Fingers crossed.

[BigKat]

I'm shocked. The layout I mentioned above, without any text ads on top, is still being displayed. This is likely the reason why for the first time in months we're seeing some sales from Google dribble in. Why are those text ads gone? End of quarter and Google sucked out as much money as they needed to please shareholders? I guess we will find out if this is the case on the 25th. Could it be advertisers are scaling back their ads after allegations of Google scamming billions from Fortune 500 companies running ads ( [webmasterworld.com...] )? Don't really know, but I'll take it while it lasts.

[RubicCubed]

@Nutterum

Not the usual suspects but traffic from Google.it this time around. The usual suspects I have blocked, well mostly blocked from using our contact form because of heavy spam solicitations.

Google scamming billions from Fortune 500 companies

I saw this in the news and my first thought was if Google was so boldly confident to scam these big companies out of billions of dollars, I could only imagine what Google has been doing to us. Then it occurred to me what Google has been doing to these big companies started happening shortly after Sundar Pichai became the CEO of Alphabet. I think he needs to step down and if he refuses then be fired. All Sundar knows how to do is scam and spam ads. Someone new needs to come in and clean up Sundar's mess and attempt to restore confidence with everyone including us.

[ichthyous]

I'm shocked. The layout I mentioned above, without any text ads on top, is still being displayed. This is likely the reason why for the first time in months we're seeing some sales from Google dribble in. Why are those text ads gone? End of quarter and Google sucked out as much money as they needed to please shareholders?

Traffic has been somewhat more stable and there is a trickle of conversions...better than 2022, but still nothing close to 2021. I have been seeing results with no ads for quite some time now, it's not new. Perhaps all the bad press about how awful Google search has become is working and perhaps users are moving more rapidly away from search than Google expected due to their frustration. I wouldn't count on it lasting...we are just part of the experiment.

[RedBar]

And here we go again ... Yesterday I achieved 97.7% of my OLD average with good traffic all day UNTIL 23.00 and then it fell of the cliff edge until 07.00 this morning, we'll see how Friday goes however I doubt it will do much.

[christianz]

Traffic is hopeless overall. Recoveries last 1-2 hours max.

There is also the usual constant A/B testing and throttling. A/B tests get swapped at the beginning of each hour, its very visible watching real-time charts.

[renatovieira]

Very slow today....

[Treud]

Traffic is better since a few days. Stable, better CTR, more inquiries.
Increase is mostly in the Euro Zone, & Canada. US is up, but not as much as others.

[BigKat]

I have been seeing results with no ads for quite some time now, it's not new.

In our industry we've had 2 or 3 text ads at the top of the results for all of 2023. Last year there were times, outside of major updates, where only one text ad appeared at the top of the SERPS in our industry. Seeing no text ads yesterday was new for us, though today I see three text ads are back and followed by the people also ask box. Needless to say, sales/traffic from Google are gone again.

I'm of the belief that Google uses much of their computing resources to fine tune ads/results to maximize revenue on a much smaller scale then any of us believe. It's possible Google customizes their results down to NAICS codes in the USA or by using their own internal classification system to drill down and target specific businesses that compete against each other. Doing so would provide a base set of industry targeted results that can then be used for user level personalization. Google's goal being to generate results that prompt businesses to compete and remain competing with each other using ads, driving users to click those ads and to produce a set of search results that meets the bare minimum to satisfy users.

[Dooku]

I'm of the belief that Google uses much of their computing resources to fine tune ads/results to maximize revenue on a much smaller scale then any of us believe.

That is not a belief....it's a fact. The amount of data combined from all google apps/systems/add-ons and things people don't even know of like "google standards" that ere implemented on websites will allow for an unbelievable granular "big data" collection. There is NO WAY that google will not use that as you describe.

Combine this with handing over you most precious business data to google by using GA/GA4 and other google ecosystem stuff then there is no way in hell you will not be robbed by google of your earnings. This is NOT rocket science. The cognitive dissonance runs very deep with webmasters in this regard even though they are staring at the proof with their own eyes.

[engine]

There seems to be a lot of volatility over the last few days, and I wonder if we have some kind of update going on.

[RedBar]

I wonder if we have some kind of update going on.

I'd been womdering that too simply because of my traffic patterns. I'm not seeing moderate roller coaster type traffic patterns, I am seeing broken saw tooth patterns, sharp ups and downs / yo-yo patterns , sometimes on an hour to hour basis but sometimes downs of 2/3/4 hours and then ups for a couple of hours then downs again ...

This is for my global site that obviously should have traffic 24 hours a day, it used to however now it does not and when I compare these charts against out hotel venue the manipulation evidently stands out.

For me G seems to be all-at-sea with international traffic and how to deal with it at the same time incorporating it into local / national SERPs for each country. Specific language searches and rankings is obviously not as difficult to create as the predominant Internet English language sites.

For me, even though it would probably mean less traffic, I would prefer to separate-off localised traffic v international business and even pay a small fee for it simply because the current Google SERPs does not perform at all well and certainly nothing like it used to.

[superclown2]

If I want to find the latest pages on any subject using Chrome the new huge PAA layout that I am still seeing, and that makes me scroll right down to actually find anything, simply doesn't allow it. It isn't a problem on other browsers though. Result: although I used Chrome because of some useful extensions I have switched my default to FF.

Just what on Earth is going on at Google? Is this really the way to squeeze more money from search? Who is making these 'brave' decisions?

[ronron]

I have a feeling all the recent volatility has to do with AI content and how to deal with it. AI has exploded on the scene the last several months and now big G is tackling it to varying degrees of success.

If you look at the G core updates over the last few years, they have a steady pattern of alternating 6 and 4 months between them. If the pattern holds, then there should be a core update this month of July.

[superclown2]

Reluctantly, I used Chrome so-called search again today on desktop to check some SERPs positions by the usual way by using quotation marks around a text string. It didn't work. So I tried without the quotation marks and what I did get was the usual rash of 'Missing: widgits | Must include:widgets' results. That's after I've scrolled past the massive PAA filled with irrelevant search terms of course.

Message to Google: if I put 'widgits' in my search term then I am looking for results about widgits! How clear does this have to be?

What a mess - I have never seen such appalling results from Google. If they had real competition and were not almost universally the default 'search engine' (which many believe to be the result of allegedly illegal monopolistic practices) they would rapidly do an Altavista and vanish. Roll on.

[RedBar]

Reluctantly, I used Chrome so-called search again today

Ok, I have no idea how long this has been available for Windows since I only saw it yesterday:

[duckduckgo.com...]

So far it seems very clean with good results. For several years I have used both DDG search and browser on several phones therefore I had no hesitation installing it.

One of my favourite things with this browswer is the ease of changing country searches.

[RedBar]

I forgot to ask, is anyone else seeing Pinterest ranking extremely well again with all its stolen / scraped info and images?

[not2easy]

@RedBar - re: DDG - it has been my default SE for years now, but FF lets you choose which search you want to use each time. I have 7 SEs to select from at the browser's search bar.

On my sites' privacy pages, I try to let others know about DDG, they have a bunch of suggestions for your visitors.

[RedBar]

@not2easy

DDG - it has been my default SE for years now, but FF lets you choose which search you want to use each time.

Me too however I have 11 SEs to choose from ! I have some non-English ones like Yandex etc.

This DDG browser is obviously in beta form since there are not a lot of things one can do in settings but even using Google search in DDG seems cleaner, it's probably my imagination on a sunny Sunday afternoon :-)

[renatovieira]

Heavy traffic today...

[ichthyous]

USA traffic down hugely today...-53% at 1pm and still dropping. Search is -21%. Most other countries higher today. Anyone else seeing a big drop in USA traffic today?

[EditorialGuy]

Our U.S. traffic and traffic in general have been up in the last few days, compared to the same days last week. That stands to reason, since last weekend was a long U.S. holiday weekend.

[Alex_1729]

USA traffic up today, as well as for the last two days for my newest site (yesterday was a blast). First time in a long time that one of my sites is profiting from a Google update. I'm expecting this to stop any time now, but it's a nice change.