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]

[ichthyous]

Very odd rotating traffic patterns...yesterday USA traffic was down -60% until 1:30pm...it was completely stalled. Then it suddenly turned and shot up in an upward stairstep pattern all day and ended +8%. Australia was at 0 visits for the day and much of Western Europe dropped up to 35%. Today Australia is +145%, Western Europe is strong, and UK is -35%.

In general I have been seeing very low early-day traffic with a surge in the afternoon for perhaps a month or more. I am also seeing more and more days with very big drops followed by a huge surge in the same day. Not sure if this has to do with a rotation of the type of page layout in each market several times a day

[Mestrick]

It is the new normal, that at every selected hour's gap, the SERP results change and you can check it on your own by searching the keywords manually. I don't know these results are not constant, morning 3rd position for 1 website, and after 3 hours or 4 it is out of the SERP, and then again in the evening it is at 7 or 9th, and this continues till midnight and again in the morning at 3rd position, I am bored by this patterns now, not sure what will work for me

[RedBar]

Whilst my global sites are not directly aimed at public supplies my information is there for educational purposes and this is the weekend I do expect traffic to reduce thanks to school holidays etc. until the last week of August.

Yesterday's traffic was 196% of my new average with several solid project enquiries however once again none of them from the "West". Whilst the main business operates through .coms I am trialling with .asia / .cn / .in in the local G.tlds to see if they can rank well and drive any new enquiries.

[RareBit]

I have noticed in SEMRush that my keyword positions are currently wrong, obviously based on what I can see in incognito mode (they usually match up or are very close)

[Nutterum]

SEMRush / Ahrefs are having big disparities with what Google is showing since 25-th. I use SERProbot and basically get clusters of keywords via incognito VPNs to measure the "closest to the truth" SERPs . Using that service (which is actually very reasonably priced even at volumes) I can see shifts in SERPs due to google updates "faster" . I assume there are quite a few similar services to the one I'm using, just pointing out that the generic ones are out of whach big time.

[renatovieira]

Another day of massive drop around here. Signs of something big coming our way...

[BigKat]

Signs of something big coming our way...

Probably more drops, more ads, more silence from Google and a big increase in the number of businesses holding meetings to plot a path forward without Google.

[ichthyous]

Another day of massive drop around here. Signs of something big coming our way...

Same here...but only USA traffic is down...-65% at 11am. I have seen huge intraday swings these days though...it starts off extremely low and then suddenly surges. So by the end of the day you can be at break even or higher. The odd thing to me is that our dearest Google seems to know exactly where to apply pressure on traffic. It is always my most important geographic territories that see traffic completely vanish. This week I have seen USA drop like a stone and then recover, UK drop like a stone and recover, AU and CA vanish completely one day and high the next, and UAE is down every day now (summer?). It's like Google analyzes what traffic is most important to you and removes that in order to force people to buy ads.

[RedBar]

Fingers crossed because traffic levels seem to be much more normal. Almost 17 hours so far of my Googleday and I'm at 106% plus I've even had a project enquiry from the USA ... Whatever next .?.?.?

[Micha]

Another day of massive drop around here. Signs of something big coming our way...

Since John already says to start the countdown music, you are probably right.

[twitter.com ]

[BigKat]

Since John already says to start the countdown music

I'm actually surprised anyone still listens to him since he doesn't really communicate much of anything and is often flat out wrong. His response to the question of having any updates this summer was "I'm sure we'll have some" which set my DUH meter off the charts.

[Micha]

ha ha ha, yes okay, you are right

[BigKat]

@Micha

What I find interesting is we have a company that talks about providing useful/helpful/great content yet JM picks the silliest questions to reply to and responds with the shallowest of answers. Oh the irony....

[EditorialGuy]

We've seen modest but welcome week-over-week increases every day this week. We're still down quite a bit from the same days last year, though.

One trend that I've noticed for our site is an improvement in pages on our core topics. Subject expertise or authority seems to be getting a boost for our major bread-and-butter pages, at least right now.

[ichthyous]

Huge drops in both USA and UK traffic today...-39% and -32% compared to last 4 recent Thursdays. My ranking went up today, but upon checking GSC my backlink count dropped by almost a third...has anyone else seen that?

[Micha]

@bigkat
That's right and his answers are general and often pretty meaningless. As far as updates are concerned, however, we can assume that even though he doesn't mention a date, it will be coming soon.

@ichthyos
This is the case with some website owners (including me).

[guarriman3]

+20% yesterday, compared to the past Thursday. +15% in GSC's total impressions on Wednesday, compared to the last Wednesday.

And it's a good difference, since in July my pages suffer a week-over-week traffic drop, due to the summer vacations.

Not sure if this is the already-expected Google Algorithm Update for this summer announced by John Müller [twitter.com...]

[Martin Ice Web]

@ichthyous, same on our site. gain and loss. gain and loss. Seems like the give you a candy that you still feed them and have some hope. Next day no candy, no hope.

Fingers crossed because traffic levels seem to be much more normal.

Yesterday, totaly normal traffic with lots of sales. It lasted till evening. Today. NO CANDY.

I hope so much, that apple will lunch a user oriented SE.

[superclown2]

Speaking as a searcher, Google's new layout on Chrome that I am seeing on desktop is unusable. I've had to switch to FF, using Chrome just when I need to use one of their addons.

The results I get for anything other than plain vanilla searches are pathetic, any attempt at getting meaningful results for long tail searches are a waste of time since it defaults to the lowest common denominator which is dominated by high ad spenders. The huge PAA is full of results that are completely irrelevant to the search terms I entered.

I predicted months ago that Google would go for broke. I may be wrong but these results look very much like a desparate attempt to wring the last drops out money out of the Internet before the axe falls.

[ichthyous]

Has anyone checked their backlink count at GSC? Mine has dropped by a third. USA and UK traffic also way down again today...

[edited by: ichthyous at 1:58 pm (utc) on Jul 21, 2023]

[BigKat]

I may be wrong but these results look very much like a desparate attempt to wring the last drops out money out of the Internet before the axe falls.

I'm sure some searchers see this as well which explains our slow and steady increase in traffic/orders coming from other search engines. I think Pichai is building up the bank account for some big legal settlements and also so that when his golden parachute deploys there will be plenty of money to cushion his landing. IMO, Pichai is all washed up just like Google's search results.

[ichthyous]

I'm sure some searchers see this as well which explains our slow and steady increase in traffic/orders coming from other search engines.

Ha, that's a joke...I see almost nothing from Bing. It's inert...useless. All of the non-Google search engines combined are about 11% of my search traffic.

[RedBar]

USA and UK traffic also way down again today...

Supposedly today in the UK it is one of the highest road traffic days of the year with most schools closing and the traditional summer break starting, supposedly, I have no idea!

[BigKat]

I see almost nothing from Bing. It's inert...useless.

Our company is both a manufacturer and retailer. We have a good grip on our distribution channel and what we sell can't be purchased in a marketplace or from a Google ad. Some of our products are need based, and if shoppers can't find them in marketplaces, Google, etc. some are going to other search engines to find us. In the current environment, having unique and compelling content is not enough to survive in ecommerce. Having unique products that marketplaces don't sell, and Google can't serve alternative ads for, is greatly helpful in the current environment. I would expect more SEOs and store owners of general merchandise to make the shift to selling unique items that have a greater chance of ranking -vs- the same products that are sold in marketplaces and by dozens of other sellers.

[mhansen]

@ichthyous

Has anyone checked their backlink count at GSC? Mine has dropped by a third. USA and UK traffic also way down again today.

I personally have not noticed it, but Barry posted about it on twice on Twitter. Once yesterday, and again this morning after asking JM about it.
Yesterday [twitter.com]
Today [twitter.com]

[ichthyous]

@Mhansen thanks for the heads up...apparently I'm not the only one seeing this. It doesn't seem to have affected ranking...yet.

[superclown2]

I hope so much, that apple will lunch a user oriented SE

The deal that makes Google the default on so many browsers and operating systems (in exchange for massive payments) is under fire from numerous legislators who claim it creates an illegal monopoly. Despite Google's 'lobbying' sooner or later it will have to end and since billions of dollars are involved companies like Apple may well have a few ideas up their sleeves.

One way or another, though, whether from governmental action (more likely from Europe or Asia than the USA; Google's variety of 'lobbying' is pretty much illegal in many jurisdictions outside the States), competition from AI or their own recklessness in abandoning quality in favour of short term financial gain, that monopoly's days are numbered, in my humble opinion.

[MayankParmar]

I have stopped posting on the forum, but I wanted to jot down my final thoughts before I quit the industry.

Google always favours big companies, no matter how original or well-cited my content is. Your SEO, authority, and original work won't make any difference. Trust me, I have done everything I could, but to no avail. I've been in this industry for 8 years, producing original reports that have been referred to by top-tier publications. Yet, despite all the backlinks and recognition, Google still doesn't rank me fairly.

Every week my work is referred by top publications. Every single week. They refer my work, link back to me and rank in Top Stories, SERP, News, and Discover. And I don't. I don't even get traffic in three figures.

To any Googler reading this post, can you still justify "content is everything, people first" PR statements?

The issue got worse after the 2022 core update. There's been no recovery, and my traffic continues declining with every unannounced update (it has worsened this week). There's been no luck even after sharing examples of this seemingly unfair ranking with Googlers.

Google does not rank me appropriately for my original work. I fail to achieve high rankings on Google, even when my work is cited, referred to, or backlinked by top-tier publications globally. Despite being linked by multiple top-tier publishers, Google fails to rank my content while continuing to rank those big publishers. It's audacious that Google maintains that original content matters under these circumstances.

I'm at a crossroads now, debating whether to hang in there or sell the site before things get worse. Any advice or shared experiences would be much appreciated.

Thanks to everyone here at WebmasterWorld. I have been here since 2017 and made a lot of good friends <3

[edited by: MayankParmar at 11:16 am (utc) on Jul 22, 2023]

[StupidIntelligent]

@Mayank - I know the name of your site, but I can't figure out, who would want to buy it at what revenue-multiple. If you start now, it might take weeks, before you can get - probably - a media company to show interest. During that time, there are chances you will lose more traffic, and this is what kills the deals during the due-diligence process done by the potential buyers.

[superclown2]

Google does not rank me appropriately for my original work.

If it's any consolation - we are all in that same boat :-(