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%.

[Nutterum]

Just like clockwork, August pickedup the slack and the last two weeks have seen 20% more visits across all EU countries. Not surprisingly the branded keywords are slow to pick up the slack and are moving 1 week behind pace. What is interesting though is that a plethora of small competitors filled to the brim with PBN links are occupying the top 5 slots. Which is a shame. No one can convince me giga e-commerce shops like Zalando perform worse than buysummerdressescheap.com (example site) with 2 legit links and 0 content , not to mention 100x less products.

[Treud]

I have slighter better results on the GSC and inquiries for products none checked for years!

[mosxu]

Today there is no freaking human clicking ads organic! Nothing!

[ichthyous]

Traffic has been sky high for the last two days...like someone flipped the switch on. No more mysterious drops in USA traffic for hours at a time etc. This definitely has something to do with schools being back in session (I get a ton of edu traffic). But I am also seeing a lot of inquiries, so lets hope it keeps up for a while at least.

[renatovieira]

@ichthyous - I had those golden days too. I don't know if it's related to link in the search generative experience AI-generated answer. Since Google SGE drops links In AI-generated answers, my traffic is back to normal. Coincidences?

[ichthyous]

@renatovieira I hadn't checked that, in fact I have never used google's AI-assisted search, maybe I should try it. When did the links disappear? I have very strong traffic today...+30% USA, +24% search, +19% direct. I'm sure it cannot last at this pace.

A friend showed me Bing and said he has switched to it exclusively because he loves the AI search app, which has links at the bottom of each search...including to my site. But my Bing traffic is still almost nil. Perhaps it's not being identified as Bing and analytics aren't picking it up?

[renatovieira]

@ichthyous - [seroundtable.com...]

[Broaster]

This has been the worst ever, the past several weeks no traffic, then indexing issues, and then my new articles are indexed and then now again no more indexing. Whats going on? two days ago I posted two articles I copy and pasted the link in search and its indexed, now I posted three articles brand new and its been 10 hours and they still are not indexed even though google search says they are. :( my traffic is 3 visits an hour.

My website is 14 years old, the past 4 or 5 years have been hell whats crazy is in 2020 during the Covid I was able to get a lot of traffic and then that died off in 2021 with the core web vitals thing was integrated and now all traffic has been dead except if I get lucky on Bing and get a surge in traffic which happens once in a blue moon. My average hourly visits now for the past several months is 5 visits an hour. Its crazy the same few websites get all the top stories links and positions in google news. I even type in full title articles from my published articles and what appears is one website in all pages and irrelevant content and then my article with the exact title on the final page.

Weird is this a shadow ban or something in google news?

[Micha]

Well, even if your articles get indexed by Google News, that doesn't mean you'll get traffic. It's been crashing for me since the beginning of the month and the only thing I see is that, as usual, the bigger sites are ranking well. To me it seems more like Google is trying to get rid of small sites right now, when I look at my topic area it's definitely ridiculous what Google is doing. It seems that many small publishers are currently doing the same, at least you can read everywhere that they hardly get any traffic from Google News.

[RubicCubed]

the same few websites get all the top stories links and positions in google news.

For the most part it is the same for us in search selling products. I believe Google chooses a few sites to model their algo/AI after to produce the baseline "quality" standard to which all sites are judged against and ranked. Such a method to create a baseline measurement of quality creates a built-in discriminatory environment that tends to favor the chosen ones who have the most money, largest staff, publish the opinions/information the standard creators inside Google align with, etc. But in the case of news, Google must satisfy those who are more likely to sue them. Smaller publishers are not as likely to take legal action.

For many of us selling products, Google tried to cancel us earlier this year and Google's efforts to destroy us continue. All that consumers find in Google are mainly Amazon ads until a bit of a scroll to see Amazon as the first organic. It will be very difficult for us to survive in this discriminatory environment. Google has stripped shoppers from seeing alternatives to the mega marketplaces that exist primarily as a bridge between Chinese sellers and consumers.

[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%