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]

[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.

[christianz]

No change here. Traffic as bad as previous days and within 1-2% of last week's figures.

[EditorialGuy]

First time in a long time that one of my sites is profiting from a Google update.

Speaking of which, what counts as a Google "update" these days unless it's confirmed? Rustybrick has reported on continuing volatility in the search results (as suggested by any number of tracking tools), but there's been no word from Google.

Are volatility and churn simply the new normal? Or should we expect confirmation of a July update from Danny Sullivan and the Google Search Status Dashboard at some point?

[RedBar]

Are volatility and churn simply the new normal?

I feel it has been this way for several years now as G attempts to create what it sees as their optimum set of results. Of course the biggest problem with this optimum set would be that it would only satisfy a specific set of searchers and website owners simply because G has so many sites to choose from.

This, in turn, pushes G more and more to the class ads scenario with those willing to pay to be seen above the organics. It's probably not what many want to read however it's almost 90+% rolled-out now.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

Drop, drop, drop. Any changes. You can update content, you can add new, you can do whatever you want - nothing will help you these days.

[renatovieira]

Heavy traffic yesterday. Today huge drop... :-|

[ichthyous]

I saw a huge drop in USA / CA traffic yesterday, and then at 2pm it suddenly turned and shot much higher, so ended the day -11% for USA. Today I am starting the day -64% on USA traffic at 11am! Canada also down 37%. But the rest of the world is strongly higher, including UK, europe, AU, and UAE. It seems that Google is going to perpetually siphon off the north american traffic while letting the rest of the world flow freely most days.

[Atomic]

Speaking of which, what counts as a Google "update" these days unless it's confirmed?

I believe that there are major, announced updates we all know and love. But there are also mini core updates that are not announced. I've noticed a lot of similarities between what happens when a core update is rolled out and these no name updates.

[renatovieira]

@ichthyous - Yesterday I had unusually high traffic. Today I observe a huge drop. Something big is happening...

[ichthyous]

@renatovieira my traffic has been strong except for USA and Canada. Today they are both down a lot, which means my total traffic is down. It's not search traffic though, it appears to be direct traffic that has vanished today.

I have noticed a distinct on/off pattern during the day...your USA traffic can be extremely low for hours then suddenly surge upwards for the rest of the day making up much of the drop. Strange and highly manipulated.

[mhansen]

Delete if not allowed, but I read this [mariehaynes.com] last week (A Marie Haynes blog about AI, the HCU updates and their relationship) and spent the weekend reviewing my own site, and many very high authority, well branded sites in the same market, that have experienced huge drops over the last 6-18 months of HCU updates. In my market, some of the leading brands (Like daily TV advertisers, +10m monthly visitors in SEMR now down to under 500k in 18 months, etc) have lost 90% of their traffic over the this time period. Much of what is written is immediately present and so easily recognized on those sites.

If not allowed please delete, but for anyone who is an SEO or publisher, has content that drives search traffic, etc - it popped a few light bulbs over my head and I've already begun testing some of the easily actionable takeaways I got from it.

[Alex_1729]

Speaking of which, what counts as a Google "update" these days unless it's confirmed?

These days, if it's higher than 8 on Semrush Sensor, I call it a Google update. Anything in between 5 and 8 is a sort of mini Google update for me. Updates are happening every day, but these are only worth looking at for me, especially if Semrush reports my niche is heavily affected, which is usually reflected in my analytics as well.

The site I mentioned still improving today, though slightly less. I see Semrush Sensor reports higher volatility again today, so I think this is normal.

[superclown2]

for anyone who is an SEO or publisher, has content that drives search traffic, etc - it popped a few light bulbs over my head and I've already begun testing some of the easily actionable takeaways I got from it.

I still see, here in the UK:
1) Authority: in other words, heavy spending advertisers: trump everything.

2) Links: not necessarily relevant to the site's products or services pushes sites way above where they should be. In particular have watched an average site with hundreds of links on hacked Wordpress sites, which vanished from the SERPs a couple of years ago, bubble to near the top again for what I would term second level search terms before Christmas and it is still there.

3) Quality: I have watched a competitor putting enormous work into their site to make it far and away the best in the vertical. It rises above the rest but is still buried by the above for all but very specialised search terms. Their earnings will not be great.

4) Freshness: Google gives a boost to new content (once you have got them to list it (by no means guaranteed unless you have truly unique content): this only lasts a short time though before it sinks below (1) and (2).

5) Age of site: this is useful if the content stays fresh, but not too fresh; too many changes and a penalty can be triggered.

So: yes, quality matters, albeit in a minor way. Whether the amount of work you would have to put in, in order to get the crumbs off the table after the big spenders on ads and links have taken the majority of the business, is worth your while is debatable though. Launching a new site? Unless you have very heavy pockets don't even think about it unless you have a subject that no-one else has already written about. Found an obscure niche? A waste of time because Google will ignore any other than plain vanilla search terms. Putting a new site on an expired domain? That horse died ages ago.

To sum up; if you want to make major changes to a website because of advice that was written by someone with a book to sell I would be very careful if I were you.

[ichthyous]

Once again yesterday started the day with very low USA traffic and saw traffic on an upward trend all day, culminating at 9pm. By the end of the day I was in the positive on USA traffic. This morning both USA and UK traffic are off the cliff at 11am, down -48% and -50% each. Search traffic is -35%. Let's see if the late-day upward trend kicks in today.

[edited by: ichthyous at 3:25 pm (utc) on Jul 11, 2023]

[renatovieira]

Very slowwww today, again...

[mhansen]

To sum up; if you want to make major changes to a website because of advice that was written by someone with a book to sell I would be very careful if I were you.

Fortunately, I've been building sites and handling SEO for myself and clients for quite a long time since I started this journey in 1998, and I know that changes of any kind, can be just as harmful as helpful, thus the reason we test in small chunks and wait for results. What I gleaned by reading her blog was fairly enlightening after experiencing slight drops of 1-3 positions over the last several months, comparing it to the content which displaced mine with a different set of glasses on and paying more attention to the presentation of that content. With structured hierarchies on a website, it's fairly simple to make changes to a single section with 25-30 pages of content and monitor results over 30 days to see if the changes have any positive or negative effect.

Content and structure our the easiest things we can work on, so they always get put to the front of the experiment line.

[ichthyous]

After a nice week or so of relatively stable traffic, I am seeing the previous pattern from April and May re-emerging. I have lost up to 89% of the traffic on a wide swath of my most important (and competitive) landing pages today. All of that loss if from the USA and UK it seems....the traffic from both countries seems to be turned off today.

Meanwhile, I am supposedly ranking 1-3 for almost all of these terms as of yesterday. In other words, the mysterious vanishing traffic scenario we saw earlier this year. I AM seeing a lot more ads on the page again.

[JeepersCreepers1]

The problem is Google only pay an attention on huge website, it does mean corporate site like BBC, NYT, etc. It's normal because these websites have an real impact on revenue from AdSense, ADX, etc. Finally, best option is create 10-20 spam's websites on wordpress, do an internal links and publish more and more not high quality content. In this case better be a sneaky SEO guy than typical guy. Everything what can we read published by specialist from Google are totally #*$! because Google need blind sheeps.

[RedBar]

Finally, best option is create 10-20 spam's websites on wordpress, do an internal links and publish more and more not high quality content.

Do I assume you are suggesting MFA sites (Made For Adsense)?

We all know, well should know, what happened to those.

[JeepersCreepers1]

@RedBar Not for MFA but websites linked to the main website include some key words and phrases but not too much because Google recognises that cheat. Release website only for MFA doesn’t work in long term. It’s clear. At this time Google need more and more content because they need to be a competitor for ChatGPT and social media websites are supporting by AI. Really Google has a huge problem. Time is running out but ChatGPT (also Microsoft pubCenter) is stronger every day and Facebook, Threads and WhatsApp will join as an another competitor for Google. For publishers in long term should be a good news.

[RedBar]

but websites linked to the main website

Aha, keyword satellite sites ! I had loads of those during the 90s/00s and they worked extremely well for several years since most search engines did not index all sites that well. This changed in the late 00s and from the 10s onwards most sites were being crawled reasonably well however Google is such a mess at the moment with not only poor crawling and strange rankings but also pages being dropped / removed for no apparent reason.

FWIW the last few months I have created precisely what you have suggested using my own template, not WP, and ensuring that the page info and image content is unique and of high quality. These sites are an average no more than 15 pages total and dedicated to that important keyword product.

IF this is successful I'll advise back here.

[superclown2]

Content and structure our the easiest things we can work on, so they always get put to the front of the experiment line.

Absolutely. The right internal linking structure, and 'sticky' content, can make a huge difference. My comments were not aimed at yourself (I appreciate that, like me, you have decades of experience) but at those who might perhaps be tempted to clutch at straws and make unwise changes without looking at the possible downsides.

Where I will disagree though is a 30 days test period. I have found time and again that even after fairly minor changes search positions can tank initially, then rise slowly over months. I have also seen the opposite effect time and again as well. The work I am doing at present (and I fully accept that I may be barking up the wrong tree) is aimed at results in a year and possibly longer. In this I am assuming of course that Google will still remain in it's present form, which is not a certainty bearing in mind the worldwide legal actions and the changes that AI may bring.

Google is a past master at deceiving those of us who try to game (their term, not mine) the system.

[Martin Ice Web]

Big drop today. Started the day with -50% again and it didn´t get better so far.

But at least poeple a googplex didn´t lost their humour.
today googlesearchliason twittered:

Make websites for poeple not for search engines and you will be rewarded with traffic.


What a laugh. Make good websites with good content and you will be rewarded with google stealing your content.

[renatovieira]

I see my traffic fully manipulated since yesterday. There are exactly 10 clicks per minute. Yesterday's total pageviews were identical to the day before yesterday.

Today will be the third day with identical traffic. You can shamelessly notice a limit filter installed on my site. It's pathetic or some traffic limiter while some update is happening.

[RedBar]

My global sites are keeping steady their new lower levels of traffic which is a small bonus, the big bonus at the moment is my reduction in email spam and especially so French email spam.

Surely I can't be the only one to see this?

[ichthyous]

Yesterday was the big drop for me...today USA and UK are both down but not as much, so perhaps a recovery is in play. Heavy traffic from India though...I really hate blocking such a big country but these visitors are simply not going to become customers, and they steal a lot of my images to use for free. I have young 'fans' from India and also have gotten press there, but it's been years. Is there any reason why I should not block India at this point?

[RedBar]

19.00 UK time today and my last 12 hours, similar to last Wednesday, have been what I would describe "as expected" by historical traffi levels.. These huge ups and downs are perplexing, traffic used to be smooth, I could predict within low percentages my daily levels, these days it is haphazard to say the least.

[Alex_1729]

My informational site still rising nicely, even though Semrush reports almost 5.0 for my niche, which is usually when I see either a slight drop or a stagnation that day, until volatility reduces. This time, however, I'm seeing a steady increase after 2 weeks of stagnation. Who knows what's behind the corner, though...

[saladtosser]

I was searching for "all different types of WIDGET/Thing" today and all top results were top 10 to 20 making me think there was only 20 of this particular widget whereas after scrolling down 8-9 spots I found a page listing 122 different types of this thing, search seems broken, if i'm looking for all the different types of something I want results based on the most complete list not the site with the most owner generated backlinks :( .....Bring back relevance google. Even a non mobile site was ranking at the top on mobile, wtf

[ichthyous]

I am still seeing USA / UK / CA traffic heavily affected this week on a round-robin basis...yesterday USA ended -4%, while UK was -28%. UK had started the day strong but dropped suddenly during the day. Today USA / CA are -40% while UK is +145%. Likewise, there is a return to having entire parts of my site losing traffic each day...this week the home page is -50% some days, other categories are -70% today, while the rest remain stable. This is not due to ranking shifts...the rank is stable but the traffic is just gone. I have not examined the ad layouts for these searches...does it really matter, it's not under my control and if there is no traffic resulting from ranking well then it's not a great expenditure of time.

[Micha]

The week actually went well, but today again a complete collapse. In my subject area there are again only the big websites with their DPA news, which are exactly the same on each of these websites. Well, variety has never been Google's strong point.

[RedBar]

UK time 18.00 today, 2 hours ago, and traffic to my global site has actually stopped, yet another first for me!

[RedBar]

Cliff edge drop until 09.00 UK time this morning ... a trickle of visitors since.

[superclown2]

UK time 18.00 today, 2 hours ago, and traffic to my global site has actually stopped, yet another first for me!

I don't know if you can see the same results on Chrome that I do? There is so much clutter with the new huge PAA layout on desktop (along with usual Googlespam) that the organics are buried and the tools I used on Chrome (exact match search and image search) just don't work any more.

I've had to switch to Firefox, at least they don't have such cluttered Google SERPs (which I confess I only use for checking on the competition; I've used DDG for actual searches for months now).

For what it's worth my own clicks from Google are a small fraction of what I was getting only a year ago - my policy now is to go into relative hibernation until either things change or they are destroyed. I was in this business long before Google and I've seen many major changes since then, hopefully there will be more of them soon.

[BigKat]

my own clicks from Google are a small fraction of what I was getting only a year ago - my policy now is to go into relative hibernation until either things change or they are destroyed

Google has chewed all the meat off the bone and there's nothing left worthy of any of our time, effort and most certainly our money. This has created an environment where only those producing content with automation/AI can extract a small profit because it requires little to no effort. The Alphabet board would be smart to replace the current CEO ASAP before the current migration of users (shoppers in our case) picks up momentum and spirals out of control.

[Micha]

Cliff edge drop until 09.00 UK time this morning ... a trickle of visitors since.

I also observe the same and the problem that large websites with the same articles are even more favoured than yesterday.
Anyway, Google News looks funny, page 1 and 2 all completely the same topic from the same press release, occasionally just rephrased a little. At the moment I'm really glad that we have so many regular readers, only with Google we wouldn't survive.

[renatovieira]

Over here, very slow today...

[superclown2]

The Alphabet board would be smart to replace the current CEO ASAP before the current migration of users (shoppers in our case) picks up momentum and spirals out of control.

I'm reminded of the tale of the golden goose.

Back in the days when Google was a search engine it was a given that webmasters produced content; Google advertised that content and made money from ads on the back of it. Everyone was happy. Then they got greedy and stopped feeding the golden goose, which is now on the verge of expiring.

Symbiotic relationships either work for both parties or neither of them. If webmasters either stop producing new content (and by that I don't mean AI generated stuff, which is just a rehash) or find new ways of delivering it, Google could be laying off even more staff to stay afloat. That is where the death spiral starts. It may take a while but it is an inevitable process - which I have watched many times before, with other companies.

I wonder how the lawsuits about AI companies using copyright content created by others in their systems will pan out? A decision against them could upset Google's entire business plan, or at least the 'search' part of it (which their company depends on). Perhaps we should invest our money in popcorn futures.

[ichthyous]

I wonder how the lawsuits about AI companies using copyright content created by others in their systems will pan out? A decision against them could upset Google's entire business plan, or at least the 'search' part of it (which their company depends on).

The lawsuits over AI datasets scraping and using copyrighted works have already started. Getty Images is one of the first. Interestingly shutterstock has now announced a partnership with open ai to sell the images generated using the platform, so they are trying to play both sides of the argument.

The recent SCOTUS decision in Warhol Foundation vs. Goldsmith has clarified what is a valid Fair Use of copyrighted works, and AI won't be included. The only way forward will be to somehow come up with a licensing stream which pays creators each time one of their works is used as the basis of an AI image or text. That seems like it would be mind-bogglingly complex to implement. But these companies will be drowned in lawsuits soon enough...including myself at the first opportunity. Thousands of my own works have been scraped and included in datasets without my permission

[RedBar]

I wouldn't know where to start finding all my images created since 1993! Apart from Getty did anyone else chase G after their 2010 image theft? Sure, many of us tried watermarking them and all that did was get them demoted or removed plus the immediate and large reduction in AdSense earnings.

[RubicCubed]

these companies will be drowned in lawsuits soon enough...including myself at the first opportunity.

I just wish we all had the resources/skill/opportunity to do the same.

I think the theft of our content really picked up steam when Google started re-writing our meta titles and descriptions. It is at this time we lost control over, what we as content creators, wanted searchers to see as a summary of the pages we created. The failure to reign Google in when our titles and descriptions were re-written helped lead us to this point where Google feels they have the right to take our work and display it anyway they want without compensation to us. Yes, we are the victims though I fear very few of us will still be around to benefit from the outcome of such lawsuits when they are finalized many years from now. What we need now are regulations and a return to the standard where search engines may only display in their search results what we have placed in our meta title, descriptions along with certain schema that includes republishing parameters.