August 2023 Google Search Observations

[RedBar]

Like many here my global overall traffic was down in July but looking at my metrics today very interestingly my Unique Visitors were at my 2023 average.

Is anyone else seeing this, i.e. page views per visitor were substantially less? Mine was -15%.

[EditorialGuy]

Our traffic was almost exactly the same today as yesterday, but with huge swings for specific (and popular) pages. This kind of volatility has been happening with some frequency in recent weeks.

In other words, a quick glance looks pretty normal, but a deeper dive elicits a "WTF?"

[ichthyous]

Traffic is definitely not normal...75% drops in my home page and some landing pages today. No new customers since the beginning of the week. Yet my rank has barely budged and I am not seeing the types of page layouts that would cause these kinds of drops. Perhaps others are being served up different results completely.

[Martin Ice Web]

Amazon has massiv earnings in first half year with their core business (seeling items). This supports my seeing in massiv orders from amazon since the last google HC update. Poeple can´t find anything on google anymore and keep switching to amazon.

[Nutterum]

For sure you can. No better way to get search volume than events+ word of mouth.

The small Gupdate was felt. Some core categories of products went from average of 3-4 position to 100+ for a few days and then came right back up to the top after. Also the G crawlers picked up some major slack and added almost a million pages to the Index, a spike I have not seen since 2020, now I have to wait and see what is the impact. Now Last but not least there was an interesting talk from a colleague doing work for one of the largest e-stores in Germany. He felt the update BAD, saying massive drops of average positions in favor of less than presentable overoptimised wordpress e-commerce websites. He is not too worried as in that space you have to buy your traffic regardless of SERP positions but definitely decreased his relevance score on Gads. He claims no changes were done and swears its just a Google money grab.

I am not sure what is the correlation between SERP positions and Page relevance score for Gads but I suspect that if you perform high on the SERPs you should be good to go for Google ads as well.

[superclown2]

He claims no changes were done and swears its just a Google money grab.

Doesn't everything that Google does fall under that category?

[RedBar]

I cannot believe I am reporting this however after nearly the first full week of August my global site's PVs are about to be surpassed by our hotel venue site which has 96% UK only traffic!

Global site Sunday 43%, today so far 67%

Hotel site Sunday 183%, today so far 239% and yes, this traffic is genuine.

I know through my widget industry that everyone I'm talking to is experiencing similar.

[mhansen]

I'm seeing a roughly +/-20% drop across an entire site from G specifically, starting around July 18th and continuing through the end of last week week where it seems to have finally leveled off. Unsure if it's related to the tracking tool volatility throughout July, but outside of a few pieces of new authoritative content on the site and the removal of GA at the end of June (not using GA4), nothing much else has changed.

[RedBar]

Global site first full 7 days of August and PVs down at 75%

Local UK site at 181%

This is completely nuts!

[ichthyous]

The traffic patterns are off the wall these days...starting the day with USA -49%, UK -61%. My homepage is -89% this morning, after weeks of seeing low traffic. The landing pages that bring in the most traffic are -50% to -80%, while other less popular ones are higher.

There is plenty of traffic to low-level content pages, so overall traffic is only down 15% or so. This bottom-up traffic usually doesn't convert as a lot of it is from places like Russia, Indonesia, India etc. Or if it does bring in any new customer inquiries they have low budgets and don't result in a sale. This is all supposedly with ranking increasing as reported by SEMrush and SERProbot

[renatovieira]

Veeery slow today, again...

[Martin Ice Web]

Since noon yesterday traffic cut into half. google traffic does not converting anymore ( amazon + 25% again)

[Alex_1729]

Slight drop today on one of my sites. Sensors showing slight uptick today, so I'd say it's normal to feel a slight stagnation atm

[Treud]

Today it’s low, low but stable !

[ichthyous]

I saw a big turnaround yesterday, with traffic increasing in an upward stairstep pattern all day...this has been common lately. The major category pages that were -80% recovered much of that by end of day. Today, they start the day lower again, but not as low as yesterday. I am seeing a broadening out of the traffic on my site...more visits to obscure tag pages that never received much traffic before and more bottom up traffic from content pages...much less traffic to the home page and the most important landing pages. Not a single new customer inquiry in five days, and not many for the week before that either.

[KaseyM]

Anyone see this horrible "From publications you follow" list on their Google search results? It's full of publications I don't even follow!

[RedBar]

Thanks to a trade specifier in Qatar I'm actually having my best day in ages otherwise it would be extremely mediocre ... As I have mentioned several times trade demand for new projects from the West these days is at its lowest level I can remember and with the massive amount of empty shops and office space to be seen is very evident of this fact.

[tuan3112]

I got dropped since 14 Jul, but now it's recovering a bit. Looking forwards to see the resul in next week

[ichthyous]

Starting my day -32% on search and -62% on USA traffic. My homepage seems to have vanished completely...visits to that are so low that even obscure tag pages have passed it. Yesterday traffic started out very low, then jumped up and spent the rest of the day declining...UK, AU, CA, UAE and Europe all down between 17-56%. What I am seeing is a huge loss of traffic across many high-traffic terms in favor of lower ranking pages which do not convert.

Looking at the SERP layouts, dropping one spot from #2 to #3 will cause a total loss in traffic. The page is topped by a series of huge ads with multiple text links, then images, then two organic results followed by suggested searches, etc until #3 appears far down the page. All of this has killed business again...summer is usually quite good for me, but not a single new contact from anyone this week, and only two last week.

[RedBar]

WooHoo ... An actual genuine order from the USA, my first completely new US customer in years!

Yesterday and today has seen more traffic than last week however I have to keep reminding myself much of my European industry is on holiday.

[samrazzy]

My traffic dropped badly, is there any new algorithm update going on?

[Nutterum]

@samrazzy - there is a shift for sure. Whether it is a fullblown unconfirmed update, I suspect no. Rather the usual Tuesday push to production on Google's end.

@redbar - Do you employ Gads, or the traffic is niche enough to not have the volumes to make it worth? Because I suspect you can see more US B2B customers with some Gmail and Gads campaigns?

[RedBar]

Do you employ Gads, or the traffic is niche enough to not have the volumes to make it worth?

I experimented with Gads in the noughties and all it did was burn through the budget by potential retail purchasers which is something we cannot do. Over the last 20 years quite a few other bulk widget suppliers have also tried Gads and all with the same result, pointless. Saying that Gads seems to be well used by widget retailers on both a local and national basis and I know of several such companies who have been doing this for years therefore I have to assume Gads works for them.

I very rarely see any widget B2B Gads It has been a very traditional supply industry for hundreds of years that depends upon a reliable and continual knowledgable supply chain. It does not jump from one production method to another simply because it's something new, our machinery costs are very high and expected to be used for years, our raw material costs vary enormously depending on many factors.

My sites are brochure sites for widget specifiers for years to come, none of us use a shopping cart since regular bulk buyers know what they want and will purchase accordingly whether it be 1 container load a month or 30. Specifiers require a bespoke product for whatever their project is, it is not an instant shopping cart decision.

International widget-specific trade fairs is my most important new business source but keeping in general touch with the occasional newsletter featuring new widgets is always a driver for enquiries, realistically after 50+ yeras I'm still doing the same old marketing thing yet delivered in a newer, more efficient and much less costly way plus it is so much easier for me to do now in-house rather than having to rely upon others to "do their bit".

[renatovieira]

Another very low day. Yesterday big traffic. Roller coaster again...

[BigKat]

I suspect you can see more US B2B customers with some Gmail and Gads campaigns?

USA ecommerce here. Our customers include B2C, B2B and B2G. We sell what we produce and our industrial type products compete against unsafe Chinese products that violate safety standards.

In the current environment, Google Ads produce a negative ROI for us. Google is displaying too many ads to those searching for information with no intent to buy. Those who haven't used Google Ads in the last six months can fully expect a far lower/negative ROI from any new campaigns they run. Google is currently driving ad growth/profits by directing low quality and non-buyer intent searchers to click ads which costs us advertisers a fortune. Surely there are exceptions to this, but even with our unique products we see no profitability with Google Ads. Identical ad campaigns on Bing are quite profitable. There's a reason why Bing's ad growth, disclosed in current earning statements, has more than doubled that of Google. Businesses, including where I work, are reducing/pulling their Google ad budgets and reallocating those funds where it is not wasted.

Organic results for us in Google continue to be buried under a plethora of ads. Since we compete in a small and specialized industry, the ads are mostly all the same Chinese products simply rebranded with different names and/or sold in different marketplaces. We're going on 6+ months of this and the SERPS for us looks like a joke with absolutely no diversity. Our free product feeds remain active, but the only visitors hitting our gclid are from Google except the rare human and even bot.

I don't see anything improving from Google, but our sales are slowly getting better from other search engines. My hopes are that with slumping smartphone sales, Apple will ditch their billion dollar contract with Google and launch their own search engine soon to ensure future growth and value for their shareholders. Regardless, I consider Google to be dead.

[superclown2]

Gads seems to be well used by widget retailers on both a local and national basis and I know of several such companies who have been doing this for years therefore I have to assume Gads works for them.

Many companies use Google ads, not for making a profit, but to buy market share and exclude competitors. Not the way I do business, but each to their own.

My hopes are that with slumping smartphone sales, Apple will ditch their billion dollar contract with Google and launch their own search engine soon to ensure future growth and value for their shareholders.

As the saying goes, be careful of what you ask for, you might get it! I shouldn't think that Apple will care overmuch about the fate of website developers any more than Google does. Search needs true competition, with the stranglehold of mega companies broken.

[BigKat]

I shouldn't think that Apple will care overmuch about the fate of website developers any more than Google does.

A small entrant in the search market would be quickly gobbled up (purchased) by Google, to eliminate the threat to their dominance, and eventually absorbed or shut down. Apple, which is far more privacy oriented and too big for Google to snuff out, could instantly chop Google off at the knees. If Google were faced with real competition to gain/regain an instant and massive loss of users, my hope is Google would return to satisfying user's searches instead of what they are doing now - simply filling their wallet by using searchers as click zombies that treat advertiser budgets as their own personal piggy banks.

[ichthyous]

USA traffic is -39% at midday here...very low. I am seeing traffic rising and falling per category from day to day, and even from hour to hour. This is not due to an algo update but rather the constant testing of new page layouts to maximize ad profits.

Traffic to my most important landing page has dropped 80% for the last few days simply due to my site dropping from position #2 to #3. My SERP has a huge colorful carousel of images, but zero traffic is resulting from it. #3 now falls so far down the page now that it results in no traffic. Likewise, when I had results higher up the page but they took away the image carousel it also resulted in a huge drop in clicks.

So, from what I see, the most competitive terms that bring in the most (and best-converting) traffic are constantly dropping and under assault...you can have a good day or two but don't expect it to last. It's very hard to get a steady flow of customers this way...and in fact it has been totally dead for me for almost two weeks until last night.

[superclown2]

Apple, which is far more privacy oriented and too big for Google to snuff out, could instantly chop Google off at the knees.

You may be right. I wouldn't be surprised though if they went to same way, squeezing the maximum they could out of our pockets.

I remember 20 or so years ago, when many of us dreamed that Altavista and Yahoo! would bite the dust and they did, when a superb new entrant called Google burst onto the scene (and we all made lots of money from them!).

Then Google fell under the influence of Wall Street and the rest is history ......

Who will take over when Google either loses their search crown, or finds richer pickings with AI, remains to be seen but it will be an interesting ride. I think most of us - although not all - would be happy with anyone but Google as the major force in search right now. Whether or not that would lead to an improvement is debatable but at least it will give us something to talk about.

In the meanwhile - looking at my stats for the last couple of weeks I'm seeing that Google is still producing far and away the majority of my site visits but Bing conversions are stratospheric in comparison! I'm even getting visits via Yahoo (yes and they convert better than Google too) which were as rare as rocking horse droppings for years. Hardly surprising looking at the junk that searchers on G have to wade through to find any genuine information. Sure the old days were very much the Wild West but in those days there were many real search engines providing a far better visitor experience than Google does now. Take away their monopoly situation and they would (will, perhaps?) be toast.

[BigKat]

You may be right. I wouldn't be surprised though if they went to same way, squeezing the maximum they could out of our pockets.

I'm sure they would though the less market share Google has the more likely a smaller player, with a better user focus, could emerge and survive.

looking at my stats for the last couple of weeks I'm seeing that Google is still producing far and away the majority of my site visits but Bing conversions are stratospheric in comparison! I'm even getting visits via Yahoo (yes and they convert better than Google too) which were as rare as rocking horse droppings for years.

What traffic we are getting from Google is junk. Like you, we are also experiencing a good number of sales from other search engines that continues to grow. I hope this trend continues since Google's relentless ad spam has created an oppressive set of search results in our industry.

[ichthyous]

What traffic we are getting from Google is junk. Like you, we are also experiencing a good number of sales from other search engines that continues to grow.

Most of it is low-level hits to a single page and out, but it was always that really. The problem is the traffic is too volatile these days to really count on any business... a rollercoaster ride from day to day. Bing traffic is laughable at this point, I don't even bother to check.