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%.

[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 %