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%.

[RedBar]

A strange couple of working weeks' traffic:

Mon > Fri 7 > 11 August 87.5%
Mon > Fri 14 > 18 August 112.6% Only Tuesday was below average at 88%

What will next week bring?

[ichthyous]

Almost 30% increases in search traffic for three days running now...including from USA, shocking! #enjoyingitwhileitlasts

[Broaster]

@Micha

Yeah its weird, all the same websites get the top stories and even MULTIPLE positions with articles several days old for the same search topic. Why did Google remove exact term search? That makes no sense. I miss when you would search a sentence or title and that article would appear in the top of search or top stories.

Now you search an exact title from an article and some other websites articles will appear and many times its irrelevant to the search term but they will get the majority of search posts

I typed in my website name in google news and put sort by date and its showing only articles from two weeks ago, none of my recent posts are showing when clicking sort by date yet google search console says they are indexed and no issues.

I currently receive ZERO search traffic from Google news dating back to 2021. My website is over a decade old and has been in google news since around 2010. All traffic has been wiped out.

[Micha]

@Broaster currently some complain that there are problems with indexing, so you are not alone and Google is supposedly already working on it. And to the rest, that's exactly what I see, in the subject areas rank only large websites and so that just no small pages appear, the articles are also partly several weeks old. I just wonder what Google thinks it has to do with breaking small news websites?

[Broaster]

@Micha
Its been like this since 2021, they never bothered fixing it at all. Its very strange, you type of an article title and you get irrelevant articles and then its one website in google news search with 30 positions when you search your title.

I have no clue whats going on. It seems also that BING works with GOOGLe, becuase when I rank good in bing I rank good in google, and vice versa.

They claimed the fixed it a few weeks ago but only for the big large websites or the ones they favor.

[ichthyous]

As an aside, not related to articles but to strange indexing patterns. Google has selected a secondary informational page as the result for the broadest and highest-volume search for my site. Not my home page, which was the result for the last 20 years.

This interior page cannot compete with the competition's home pages so I have lost most of the traffic for that term and a lot of the traffic to my home page. This makes no sense whatsoever, but Google has been showing this interior page for more than a month now. My home page has 6x more interior links and many more inbound links. Anyone else seeing this new oddity from google?

[Micha]

@Broaster I didn't have Bing News on my radar at all, but now that you mention it, I took a look and you seem to be right that Bing and Google show the same pattern.

[Broaster]

@Micha
Yeah its weird, when I get loads of traffic its only when I rank well on Bing and then Google its rare.
Right now I posted the title of my article in search and im ranking well but NO VISITS to my website, which is very strange, before all these Algorithim issues, I would get high CTR

when you ask on the google help forums they have some members who just say make your description better that is why they are not clicking lol, but I dont know anyone who clicks for the description on the bottom most people including myself click off the title and placement.

Another thing is I cover a sports niche and Saturdays are massive for me cause most major sporting events occur around Friday through sunday and guess what? Every single weekend I post articles on Saturday and NOT ONE SINGLE ARTICLE IS indexed, it happened this Saturday again there was a major sporting event, The articles were published in the morning, I searched the permalink in google search no article shows up, 15 hours later the articles appear in google news in the last page and search when the event was already over

It think google is doing this on purpose to my website. because its only on Saturdays when my niche used to get the most traffic. every weekend never fails no articles index until Sunday or late at night when the events are already over.

[Micha]

@Broaster
That's interesting, because it's exactly the same for me. Any articles we publish on Saturday don't show up, regardless of whether others are reporting on them or not. This weekend was also the worst I've ever experienced, pretty much no traffic from Google.

I guess we small websites just don't have any value to Google anymore. I can't explain it any other way when I look at the topic pages on Google News. Only 4 big websites appear and then partly months old articles follow, from other big players and then, with luck, small publishers. When I look at my site's page on Google News, the newest articles are at the bottom, the rest are completely out of date.

And you and I are not the only ones who feel this way. In my network, all the small publishers are complaining about exactly the same problem and, unfortunately, some have even decided to quit because they have no more revenue.

Asking in the Google forums unfortunately also brings nothing, because you only get the same answers: "Write high-quality content", "Stick to the rules". It all just doesn't help, because nothing changes or it gets worse and worse.

[Martin Ice Web]

Asking in the Google forums unfortunately also brings nothing, because you only get the same answers: "Write high-quality content", "Stick to the rules".

is it only me or is it just the opposite that is ranking? Imy niche is full with low content websites one or two sentences. In most cases title=meta=description. Nothing helpfull at all.
I guess that websites with high quality content are considered as SPAM because there has been so many websites using lot of (low quaility) content to boost their amazon affiliate websites. I guess HCU has a lot of collateral damage.

[Micha]

@Martin Ice Web
So it can't be because of the quality of the content, but I read a theory a few days ago that backlinks are probably more important anyway. I personally believe that Google created a ranking index from a mixture of "how well known is one in a core country", "who pays for advertising" and "who do we pay", at least for news sites. I can't explain this strange ranking in my topic area any other way.

[Broaster]

@Mischa
So you are experiencing the same thing! this is strange, why are they doing this, I see also the same 4 or 5 sebsites mostly indian based sites getting all the top tier positions and im based in the USA. I saw one website with multiple positions in top stories for a search term and some of the articles are days old

Whats interesting is going on google help forums they say original content, I laughed hard because every single one of the top stories articles are rehashes of a story that broke on Twitter, ive broken a story first and it never ranked. over 8 years ago when I was on google news id post the story first they would put my story right off the bat on the In The News section, always, now I dont even appear in top stories for anything.

my website has been in google news for over a decade, yet I saw several news websites that are only 2 or 3 years old getting millions of view a month. I think it has to do with backlinks how did they get 400,000 backlinks in under 3 years so quickly?

[Micha]

how did they get 400,000 backlinks in under 3 years so quickly?

Bought I would say. I mean as many offers as my site get for guest articles with links to specific sites per week, this still seems to be a very common scam.

[christianz]

I mean as many offers as my site get for guest articles with links to specific sites per week, this still seems to be a very common scam

Yeah I get them every day too. Speaks volumes on how easy it is to manipulate Google. If it wasn't working they wouldn't be buying those links.

[ichthyous]

And back to the old pattern...USA traffic -34% at 1pm. It dropped off a cliff at 9am...down from 14 visitors at 9am to one visitor at 1pm. You could see this coming last night as UK, CA, and UAE trafffic all came to a halt in tandem last night and ended way down after being much higher all weekend. Today traffic from those regions is back to normal and USA is hit...

[Broaster]

@Micha

Do you recall the article online a few weeks back where Google said they will fix the google news search issues, guess what they never did and they claimed they fixed it, more like they only fixed it for the big wigs.

Same issue even worse now.

The backlinks are king I believe. Because most of the sites in top stories just give their take and dont really break a news story. If original content helped you rank more smaller publishers would see positions.

I think it also has to do with pay to play, just like in Facebook they ask you to pay money for a post boost to get traffic, so a lot of these websites must be paying for adwords too. It makes sense they would accommodate those who pay for ads over those who dont. but it used to never be this way either, I miss the old days when you could find what you were looking for in search now you get irrelevant articles.

[Micha]

@broaster
It has been corrected a little, but only for the large pages.... Other than that, I agree with you.

Let's face it, we put a lot of money, time and effort into our websites, and just because the top dog from California thinks it can determine what's important, we don't have to bow to that judgment. And I'm certainly not going to throw money down Google's throat, just as I no longer care about all the tips Google employees are so fond of giving.

Sure, Google's traffic is important, but the search engine is seen as far too important and we small publishers don't have to accept that we're just a pawn. Small example with me: I banned Google ads from my website a few years ago and now market the ad space myself. This results in better revenue and fewer ads bothering my readers.

Finally, we small publishers have the advantage of being more responsive to our readers and also have more freedom to experiment with ideas. That also goes down well with readers, and that's what I focus on.

[EditorialGuy]

Yeah I get ["guest post" solicitations] every day too. Speaks volumes on how easy it is to manipulate Google. If it wasn't working they wouldn't be buying those links.

I'm not so sure that they're manipulating Google. I suspect that, in most cases, they're shady or clueless agencies that are manipulating naive clients.

[christianz]

clueless agencies that are manipulating naive clients

Definitely there is component of that too. Much like SEO and "web development" or "security vulnerability fix" offers.

But if link buying didn't work at all, not even the most gullible would fall for this. Also the general awfulness of Google rankings adds to the probability that link buying works (to some degree).

[mhansen]

An observation I am seeing today around the block. Nothing confirmed, but it does seem to correlate with tracking tool volatility and my own observations.

Indented results in organic serps seem to be dwindling away. (Where it linked to a page on left gutter, then showed an indented link to an exact section of a page, or a second page on the same site related to it - indented about 200 px). Saw this mentioned on Twitter (can't find it again) and ran through several of my own results that I know had them in the past.

Otherwise, traffic is down roughly 5-10%

[Broaster]

@Micha

I dont know why I even try anymore, no traffic = no money, yet they keep saying just write good content the traffic should come, how? I write good content and then nobody links to me, they just post my content and dont reward me with a backlink very strange. Ive had my content qouted multiple times for bigger websites but whats weird is they write my sites name as the source but don't give me a source backlink, instead they give the big wigs backlinks. How am I going to even get good quality backlinks if hey dont bother giving me one when quoting me a source? Is there a reason these websites do this to smaller publishers not linking back to them does that hurt their juice or what?

[Micha]

@broaster
The big publishers are in a special position, they are better known, get money from Google (at least in Europe, I don't know how it looks in the USA etc.) and are preferred in ranking. Of course, their backlink profile is also much stronger than ours. So we don't count there. Why they don't link you, though, I don't know.

By the way, even if you get backlinks from big websites, Google doesn't care, unfortunately I can say that from experience, because my website has some, but that didn't change anything. This reinforces my suspicion that we are disadvantaged.

Only what should we do, give up? I'm too stubborn for that and I enjoy it too much. Accordingly, I can only repeat myself: Google is not the only way. Important yes, but revenue can be generated differently, even if I unfortunately have no patent remedy.

[Broaster]

@Micha

I think you have an excellent point, because even though I dont have 100k backlinks my website years ago was getting ranked well, I would publish content quickly and it would get traffic within a quick time once published

This was 10 years ago in 2013, after that time all my traffic disappeared. Its very hard to even bother now, Google controls everything they are the big search engine. On Yahoo I rank well in singular keywords but get minimal traffic. Yahoo still uses the old algorithm which is more fair to smaller publishers. Google uses a favoritism algorithm.

I think this all comes down to EEAT, that changed the game, they will pick and choose who is credible sources or authorities yet many of these Indian sites that are 2 years old are out ranking everyone in the USA for sports and entertainment.

The downside with revenue is the adsense alternates all require a certain traffic amount each month which I no longer meet and havent met in ages for approval so I have to rely on Adsense. The crazy thing to is the adsense code I have on my website hurts my core web vitals speed. You would think googles on code wouldnt do such a thing.

[Micha]

@Broaster
Well, we'll never really understand Google's ranking anyway and the more you deal with it, the less time you have for the really important task of building your website. We can't do anything against Google's decisions anyway.

But tell me, have you ever tried to market your advertising space yourself, i.e. with fixed prices? That's a lot of work at the beginning to build up a network of customers, but then you are a little more independent from all the fluctuations.

[Martin Ice Web]

someone pulled the plug last friday. -70% so far.

[superclown2]

The crazy thing to is the adsense code I have on my website hurts my core web vitals speed. You would think googles on code wouldnt do such a thing.

It's not just your core web vitals, which might affect your SEO. It slows down site loading speed for your visitors too, which is perhaps even more important. When I gave up Adsense more than a decade ago I found the average time spent on site jumped dramatically because of all the would-be-visitors who used to click out whilst waiting for a page to load.

I wouldn't let Adsense anywhere near my sites now. Ditto affiliate merchants who insist on us using their imported content. Loading speed is too important.

Plus those 'ads by Gooooogle' that you can't delete are so irritating for many visitors.

[RedBar]

On Monday my global site had an unusual August high of single page views at 130%. That's good in the respect a searcher is finding precise quality information in one visit however it's a bit frustrating that they don't look at anything else!

[Broaster]

@superclown2

Yeah its weird when I look on Desktop my website is 100 percent on Coreweb vitals the ads load quickly from adsense, but on Mobile its failed and loads slow When I look at my website on mobile the ads take time to load for some odd reason

An interesting thing though you say about the loading speed, and ads, some of if not all of these top stories ranking website have WAYYYYY more ads than I do many even have different ad platforms on their website, yet Google said this was a violation or a penalty like ad heavy content, yet many of them have an ad above the fold, and over 50 ads on a page at times with the never ending scroll ads when you try to scroll down that appear underneath yet are ranking high.

Im confused with Googles ranking they tell us one thing but then the ones at top break all those rules they tell us that would hurt our ranking.

I rely on adsense because thats the only thing I can use now im not an affilate marketing site im a news blog site for sports niche, 10 years ago I was able to get many advertisers willing to pay for ad space for month, I currently dont make a living off my website like I did before, I think I only make 800 dollars a year now. I work two jobs, but my spare time I work on my site hoping I dont have to break my back working two jobs and can make money doing what I love again, but its hopeless.

[Broaster]

@Micha

I used to sell advertising on my website many years ago when I was getting a lot of traffic from google news and search, I was able to make a living and have several employees and was paying for a high end server thats how much traffic I got. back in 2013 I had to stop paying employees all my traffic from google news was wiped out I was no longer ranking, then in 2015 I had to stop blogging full time no money coming in from adsense, advertisers stopped paying because the flow of traffic was too low.

I had to get a job now, to make ends meet as opposed to blogging with a good income from adsense and ads.

I recently tried to blog more consistently myself because people were saying article frequency helps you rank in google news so I used the spare time I had to cover sports events locally and spent hours editing and type them to publish them. no ranking and no traffic. I guess Age of website is not a factor either cause some of these 2 to 3 year old websites from India are ranking in the USA I saw one of them on top stories with multiple articles, I clicked their article and it was flooded with ads everywhere, but they were getting 50 million views a month! thats insane. A lot of their content is AI or spun too.


I keep wondering How did they do this? Inside connection from outsourced Google Employees in India selling secrets? Its baffling because I was told limit advertisements and dont post one above the fold yet they have ad above the fold and never ending scrolling advertisements.

[ichthyous]

Here we go...70%+ drops in my most trafficked landing pages this morn. My ranking is fine so I really think that this has to do with Google emphasizing and de-emphasizing links with image carousels and sublinks. Once those vanish my traffic disappears because they skip right over that result even if it's higher than the one below with an image carousel. This seems to be somewhat random which link gets the carousel

[Broaster]

Whats crazy is this never happened before, I remember these updates were sporadic but not every week, this seems to mess with smaller publishers though. The big wigs are still ranking in top stories or top of search.

[BigKat]

Its baffling because I was told limit advertisements and dont post one above the fold yet they have ad above the fold and never ending scrolling advertisements

Part of the problem with Google's dominance being unchecked, and unregulated by Government, is it has given Google broad regulatory power to set their own self-serving demands on others. Our site would probably be banned by Google for having nothing but ads above the fold, but Google has been doing it for months in the SERPS with four text ads above the fold. In Google's eyes, they don't want anyone profiting from the traffic they send except for them.

[Micha]

In fact, I'm getting pretty good traffic from Google News today, and that's despite the fact that a topic in my niche is dominating everywhere right now.

@broaster that sounds really bad by the way and I'm really sorry you're experiencing that. Unfortunately no one can answer your question, as I wrote before, no one will understand Google 100%, I don't think even the employees there do.

[BigKat]

August core update rolling out: [status.search.google.com...]

[mhansen]

From Google - August 2023 Core update released [status.search.google.com].

May take up to 2 weeks to complete.

[sk7411]

Pretty Sure the core update was rolling out from a week now.

[RedBar]

My global site seeningly has increased traffic from UK time 15.00 this afternoon, say 6 hours ago ... we'll see what transpires.

[mosxu]

It is not an update it is moving the cheese we all need to stay calm…

[Broaster]

@BigKat

Yeah its weird Google puts ads on the top of their search lol, and the websites they let rank highly all have ads covered all over their pages some with litle content and not original.

I only have 3 adsense ads on my website, none on the homepage only on article pages, with one on the bottom. I abide by their rules this why I think people in my position were unlucky reviewed by a human quality rater who stumbled on my site and put it in the penalt box so I will never be able to rank again.

That or I need to get 100k backlinks to rank, I only have like 7 thousand backlinks, all organic, backlinks are hard to get yet websites I seen getting loads of traffic that are only 2 years old have over 300,000 backlinks how?

[RubicCubed]

core update rolling out

We got three solid value sales from Google in a five minute span - the most I have seen since they've filled the serps with ads so early in the year. Google must have turned the ads off briefly to allow these to squeak through.

[mrproxy]

Interesting discussion, what niches are you all in if you don't mind me asking?

[Martin Ice Web]

Pretty Sure the core update was rolling out from a week now.

Yes, last friday. As we know from the past, google isnīt telling the truth at all.

[Micha]

@mrproxy
I have a small news site about a specific country (I want to emphasize that it is not a travel site)

[mhansen]

Moving the cheese

"Who Moved My Cheese". One of the best 30 minute books I've read concerning business motivation. The story definitely mixes well with running a web business and finding sources of traffic.

Are you Hem or Haw?

[renatovieira]

Heavy traffic over here!

[ichthyous]

Search up 34% today, but it's mostly traffic to odd pages, not what visitors usually hit up. However I am gratified to see that traffic to my home page is back to normal since last Saturday...it was more than a month with very low traffic to my home page.

[BigKat]

A day into the core update, and I don't see any changes.

[mrproxy]

has the new updates affected traffic to adult sites?

[Broaster]

When these Broad Core Updates happen they take at least two weeks, what do they check for and is it sitewide where the entire site suffers? like a penalty that demotes your entire site?

[JeffChang]

Everything seems very quite for me so far. No major fluctuations in traffic.

Overall slight increase WoW but only by a very small %