September 2023 Google Search Observations

[mosxu]

So you guys you don’t spend in ads much? The cheese is moving even more if you spend on ads!

[edited by: not2easy at 6:49 pm (utc) on Sep 1, 2023]
[edit reason] New month, new thread [/edit]

[mhansen]

Not a rant, just an observation.

I truly don't think anything changes significantly in the SERP positioning as I have checked myself, and had others across town or across the country check to see the results. The positioning is generally within 1 spot of what I see it is as.

What does change though, is the SERP layout and infusion of ads, widgets, video, spacing so ads take up full-screen, and so much more. One day, we'll see highly targeted, high conversion visitors to a specific page that shows in organic P1 (FS) or P2 of serps, and the next day, there will be none of these same visitors. The ranked position is not different, it's just the way Google injects the SERP layout with ads, ads with sitelinks, PAA, and who knows what new widget they put in place as they measure how to squeeze every cent out of the search page visitors. ONLY when they have no other option, no answer, etc, do they send a scrap to a website owner.

Have you tried to find an organic listing on a mobile device since 2021? What used to be bad then, is absolutely gone now. 3-4 swipes to find anything outside of the Google garden. I imagine zero-click search is in the +90% range by now.

[Fluff_Nutz]

@mhansen

Yes, exactly. None of these updates are what they are announced for. This ''core update'' is meant to change and sort rankings. Apparently. Rankings for the G ads maybe but not for actual websites. Same for their October 2022 ''spam'' update. Intended to get rid of ''spam''. No, actually it was all meant to be placed into Bard. So, in a way, if your article is chosen for Bard then it's good enough for G. Meaning it must be the opposite of ''spam''.

Most of these updates, if not all, are just to line G's pockets. Why are they so consistent? They are very rarely intended to fix the SERP, just make a mess of it. They are hurting and its great!

They have law suits and fees coming out of their butt cheeks but they put themselves into this position. It's just frustrating that their way of getting the money back to pay for all of this involves the SERP. It is where most of their income comes from. Just wish it did not involve websites and businesses as much as it does... They and, mostly, we need to see them have some kind of competition. Somehow. At least then views from other sources would feel like it can make up for the damage that G does. Alas, no one and nothing else is as big. We get views from other sources, yes, but mostly its a trickle in comparison. At least for me it is anyway.. Sucks..

More Edits:
In fact I would be surprised if any of their updates were properly controlled. For example and what I mean is, sometimes, not always. I see small websites, often a year or less old. Suddenly go from a few hundred $ to suddenly $10K a month. How is that even possible? They sometimes even have graphs to prove it too. Meanwhile, other sites, older than 1 year are still struggling. Makes zero sense.

[edited by: Fluff_Nutz at 5:18 pm (utc) on Sep 6, 2023]

[superclown2]

The state cases against Google for unfair advantage in search ads were mostly thrown out by the judge.

This is the problem when decisions this important can be made by a single person who may, or may not, have a bias one way or the other. These matters should be settled by governments coming to well thought out and thoroughly argued decisions, and then creating clear and unambiguous litigation. Unfortunately it seems that is not the American way.

I confess that like you I have little faith in the USA attempts to reign Google in. However the DMA and the UK CMA rules are a different matter. 'Lobbying' has little influence over here and possible fines could shock even Google. OK these are still American companies but Europe and The UK are a huge market so G will have to sit up and take notice.

[BigKat]

What does change though, is the SERP layout and infusion of ads, widgets, video, spacing so ads take up full-screen, and so much more.

It does seem the purpose behind recent algo updates by Google is to mask more ads and organic killing features. As if we can't tell with our own eyes and concrete data backed up by the loss in traffic and sales. I don't know who Google thinks they are fooling with this...

[mhansen]

I don't know who Google thinks they are fooling with this...

I'm really not complaining here. My business is still growing and does fairly well from search traffic and other sources, but it could be doing extremely well if it weren't for the Gorilla in the room controlling the switches and diverting traffic as often as they do. (Their platform, their rules, I know....)

They fool us business owners into thinking we can build a business that has a reliable source of foot traffic (search), while at the same time, using our hard work, images, and expertise via content, to increase their earnings and slowly bleeding the non-ad buying businesses out of the loop. They fool users of Google by telling them they know what is best for them, summarizing their query into an answer. Both of these are done under the guise of fair use.

Neither of these are healthy to the digital or B&M economy, when you have employees/contractors who are hired during periods of growth and have to endure "seasonal" layoffs every 6-9 months due to Google farting in the wind and changing things up... <again>

[badctrl]

One of my pages lost about 15—20% visitors in last two or so weeks. Ad revenue also is jumping from 10% to 140%. I was thinking about start digging what's wrong but when I saw my competitors outranking me with 200 word content and 15 links i was shocked. Pages are old, not optimized page and if I turn off ad blocker my eyes cant find content because ads are everywhere, literally full layout every single block contains ads. I was curious about their backlink profile and of course its contains 90% #*$! links. This is just one example, i did research for multiple keywords and it's same shi* everywhere.


Then I realized that I have an old subdomain page with shi* content. It doesn't contain 99 links, but it's bad, texts contains straight facts, no required word counts, some links here and there. Before update i was pushed down to 10-15 place and even updating few posts with a bit of information didn't make any changes. Now without even touching those shi* pages, back in top 3 for kw with 6k – 15k vol.

Honestly, I really hope one day somebody will kick out google from the game, this is ridiculous. Seems like nobody cares about content for people.

[ichthyous]

Ok, strange...looked like a drop in the morning when USA was down 53%. Instead traffic surged the entire day with search up 34% and direct traffic up 43%!

[Treud]

I see from the 4th a constant loss of traffic after 2 weeks of ok traffic, They might have roll out another layout shift in the SERPs

[ErrlyBird]

Nosedive in conversion rate for our site. Same clicks and impressions but no conversions, wtf is this?

[StupidIntelligent]

@ErrlyBird

That's not new. It's been reported by thousands of webmasters since the early 2000.

It happens because Google has become near perfect determining "Ready to buy" or transact traffic, and gives "impressions' and "rank" for pages that its algorithms deem have the highest points.

For example, you could have a X keyword with 1000 searches daily, but only 20 "ready to buy/transact/highly interested" searches per day.

Google knows that, and may not give you these "20 critical search impressions."

Sites can get nearly identical impressions and clicks, but no conversions, simply because Google will NOT show your site during those FEW SESSIONS where it really matters.

[StupidIntelligent]

[thinkwithgoogle.com...]

This article gives a "proxy" insight into how Google algos sort out the listings.

"Ready to buy" folks have probably searched something 4 to 5 times, before, and any click coming from them to your site is what it's really about.

This traffic will go to sites that algos have repeatedly given the highest marks.

[Martin Ice Web]

worst beginning of a month with google, but best month begining with amazon!

We are a manufacturer with very unique products. With this update google did a chirogic job and laser-sharp killed all our unique products out of "transactional" search. replaced with affiliate sites, low content sites and garbage.

[ichthyous]

All of these reports of traffic being the lowest ever is scaring the crap out of me. My traffic is much higher than this past summer, and much higher than last year. All it takes is one flip of the algorithmic switch and down I will go. I feel like I have to make every sale stick before the Doom Time hits me. I wish I had Amazon as an alternative...unfortunately nobody uses Amazon in my line of business.

[mosxu]

@stupidinteligent

“This traffic will go to sites that algos have repeatedly given the highest marks”

Algo is not even in predictive mode but prescriptive and yes buyers are only sent to 3-4 sites!

The rest of us 20-30 websites advertising still get clicks after a sale takes place how is that even possible?

Whenever one of us ever clicked 20-30 ads to buy something?

[Conro]

Today a new roulotte with high volatility...and yesterday google have announced the end of update. Google want money

[Micha]

So, Google is done with its update, now there will probably be corrections.

I can say: yesterday it went back up for me (finally showed up in Google News again), also today it looks much better now.

But I bet now as I write this, the page is tiling down again. ;-)

[shbseo]

Traffic drops like a rolling stone. Took a lot of time to build the traffic and ranking keyword and then this core update smashed all of my working in this update.

[Conro]

The problem with google is this:
1 position featured snippet (casual)
2 position people also ask (casual and infinite ask)
3 You site (maybe)

Is normal all sites have a traffic Lost

[christianz]

@Conro

And at #3 they don't feature best websites. It's most likely EAT spam followed by auto generated pulp. It gets worse with each update.

[RedBar]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld shbseo!

Traffic drops like a rolling stone. Took a lot of time to build the traffic and ranking keyword and then this core update smashed all of my working in this update.

Over how long a period, months / years?

[Conro]

@christianz for me this is a abuse a dominant position. Google know you site traffic drop down, but the casual site in paa and featured snippet can earn google the same. This remove all the competition in serp. You want the 1 position before the infinite paa? Is necessary $$$. This is a abuse of google.

[Fluff_Nutz]

For me yesterday was +28% over last month. However, it was also the worst performing day of the current month so far. Now with the update finished hopefully I can see some actual growth, instead of a G bouncy castle. I often wonder if I should just spend more time with Youtube. However, being with Adsense means you get pennies. Anyone know of any good Youtube revenue companies. The equivalent of Mediavine and Adthrive? Do they even exist?

Anyway as for today, Friday, seems normal and okay. However, at 3am it took a bit of a nose dive, before then recuperating. On track for beating last Friday so far though. At least.

EDIT:
Also I read an article yesterday that the UK are trying to fine Google for £7.5b. Their reasoning is because of the G SERP dominance. What I found more interesting, and what I hadn't thought about before. Is that they want to fine them for doing damage to the economy. Which I laughed at first but then later realised it could be true. With more and more companies relying on search traffic as people are preferring to use the internet for ease. Instead of, say, going out to purchase goods. What if G are having an impact on the economy? Especially with the way they handle the SERP and being the more dominant figure on the net. Companies and a lot of big ones are constantly fighting for traffic. Yet G are throwing it away for their own greed. The only way these businesses can capitalize on their losses is to increase their prices. Hence having an impact on the economy. Do G even realise the damage they are doing? Do they even care? Probably not but seriously the US must be going through something similar and their authorities should wake up and take better action. People and companies alike are depending more and more on the web and yet G is the dominant figure and are destroying it all. Again, we need competition. This should be a sign for creating one. Alas...

[christianz]

What I found more interesting, and what I hadn't thought about before. Is that they want to fine them for doing damage to the economy. Which I laughed at first but then later realised it could be true.

Not only is it true, it is also obvious. It's like one company stole and privatized the whole Internet and took away the productivity that Internet used to bring to commerce. We now are forced to pay Google tax.

[RedBar]

@Fluff_Nutz

Also I read an article yesterday that the UK are trying to fine Google for £7.5b.

Do you have a link to this ?

[Micha]

@RedBar

Since I just read the article: [theguardian.com ]

is actually not that far-fetched.

[RedBar]

Oh dear, The Grauniad, not usuallythe most reliable of papers however I'll have a go ... I'm going to give this link to a top journo mate of mine to see what he's heard etc. thanks.

[RedBar]

WTH is going on? Since early Thursday morning 95+% of my visitors have been for a single page only!

Never seen anything like this before.

[BigKat]

Lawsuit claims search engine stifled competition, contributing to rising cost of living for consumers

They could do the same in the USA, but politicians and regulators want to bury their heads in the sand. For example, my company directly raised wholesale and retail prices to offset the cost of ads and the ever worsening traffic quality/gimmicks Google uses to extract more money out of businesses. All the DOJ or FTC needs to do in our case is subpoena that portion of our corporate minutes where it's spelled out clear as day. Heck, a subpoena probably wouldn't even be needed if all they did is ask when following-up on the numerous complaints we filed with them over the years. For those unfamiliar with corporations, the minutes are official records covering decisions/actions taken by the board of directors. But since the DOJ and FTC won't do anything here in the USA, we have and will continue to raise prices that both consumers and taxpayers will be forced to pay for.

[EditorialGuy]

Pageviews on our editorial travel-planning site shot up 17 percent yesterday (compared to the same day a week ago) after a week of daily 1- to 3-percent gains.

No wild single-page spikes--the gains are spread across most of our top 100 pages, which coincide with our two most popular and important subtopics.

Today is looking strong, too. I don't know how long the boost will last, but it's a pleasant surprise for early September when our traffic normally takes a deep dive that lasts until mid- or late December.

[Fluff_Nutz]

G are like marmite. You hate them because of how much of an impact they have on online businesses. How much of a hold they have on the internet. The fact the US authorities are doing nothing to stop them. Yet, you have to give them credit. They are smart in terms of managing to capture the audience giving them literally no choice but to rely on them for traffic and growth. Since they have next to zer0 competition. They use our sites for their own benefit. Often thinking they own it since its on their search. They use us to pay for their fines. Give us hope in getting something out of this and then with an update, destroy it.

Their dominance. Plus how important money is in life. Its practically thee God, to some degree. People need money and you can't live without it and G have everything and everyone wrapped around their finger. No matter the hate and frustration, its smart play. It's also amazing how long they have lasted but, again, if the authorities don't care then they own the field. Complain all you want. They are the only winners in my eyes.

It's easy to have a love and hate relationship with the big G. I hate the fact I have found some respect for corporate greed. Though, life itself is all about greed. You either become something in life or you can die trying.

[RedBar]

My global site has almost come to a grinding halt this afternoon and of the few page views I am getting they are still mostly single pages. This is utterly bizarre.

[Conro]

[content remove]

[edited by: Conro at 5:58 pm (utc) on Sep 8, 2023]

[not2easy]

Mod's note - just a reminder that this is not the place for calls to action and/or organizing anything. (ToS #26) This thread is about sharing Google observations.

[superclown2]

Also I read an article yesterday that the UK are trying to fine Google for £7.5b.

This isn't the UK per se, but a firm of solicitors in the UK. They have no government backing.

They put forward an interesting argument though. And why not risk say £10million court costs against the chance of a huge cut of £75billion if you have deep enough pockets? It's only on the same ethical level of what Google is up to. Plus the publicity will do Scroogle no good at all.

[BigKat]

@Conro

As I see in my own company, more businesses are starting to see Google as a competitor instead of a partner. Each business will react in their own way as the realization sinks in that Google is trying to take as much as they can and give little traffic/sales in return. By Google's own actions they pushed us out of their paid ads, but our free product feeds remain. I'm now pruning products out of that feed because we really don't get much traffic from them and the free feeds are most likely for Google to harvest product data more then anything else. We're such a small manufacturer and retailer, Google won't even notice. But on the bright side, shoppers will still be able to find us and our unique American made products in Bing and their partner search engines. My hope is searchers will eventually wake up and see they are being used and abused by Google so they can use a different search engine that doesn't restrict their choice to what's most profitable for Google. I'm so done with Google, but those above me aren't where I'm at just yet. If Google continues down the path they are on, it won't be long before free market does its job by rewarding another search engine. We advertisers have and are leaving Google - we just need users to follow us.

Have a good weekend.

[RedBar]

Wowser ... With less than 4 hours remaining of my Googleday my overall traffic is at 40% and still 95% single page views ... How the heck is G achieving this? Plus, get this, my returning visitors are at 33% of average!

[Micha]

I really feel sorry for the store owners right now.
They only find Amazon and affiliate sites, as I just found out when I was looking for something for an old lady. The product I was looking for was also mentioned in the headlines of the ads, but the pages themselves showed me something completely different. For customers, this is just complete crap what Google is doing here.

No usable result on the whole first page, just some crap.

Well, at least my site continues to recover, Google News seems to have tied the knot.

[RedBar]

At 21.00 UK time Friday multiple page views re-appeared for me resulting in:

Page views 50% being the lowest day since Xmas 2022
Unique visitors 80% which is similar to a weekend

I also need to point out that our hotel venue site's traffic for Thursday and Friday was also down to January / February levels however takings have been completely normal which is unusual.

I'm double-checking all my data.

[RubicCubed]

I really feel sorry for the store owners right now.

It is really bad for us in the USA. Most consumers first go to Amazon to browse and buy. Consumers who can't find what they are looking for on Amazon then go to a search engine and Google gives them a full page of Amazon ads of the same items they already saw Amazon. The products in Google Ads are either made in China or Taiwan and nowhere else. Not good that USA made products can't be found at all. Between China's low wages/slave labor, and the billions of tax subsidies Amazon gets from American taxpayers, sellers of American made goods stand no chance in this rigged environment. On scale this is a sub-economy where the beneficiaries are Amazon, Google and China. It's no surprise why the USA is becoming a failed state.

[EditorialGuy]

The products in Google Ads are either made in China or Taiwan and nowhere else. Not good that USA made products can't be found at all.

That smacks of hyperbole, but in any case, brick-and-mortar retailers like Walmart and Target rely on imports just as much as Amazon and the American consumer do. (Not that any of this falls under the heading of "September 2023 Google Search Observations.")

[RubicCubed]

@EditorialGuy

It's my understanding you are in the Europe travel space and have no knowledge/experience in the USA ecommerce industry. Therefore, I see your opinion as irrelevant fodder as it pertains to what we are experiencing in the USA ecommerce space. Similar to how my opinion would have zero relevance to your industry in that I know nothing about the Europe travel space, monetizing with ads and residing half a world away. I know where my lane is and tend to stay in it.

[RedBar]

My global traffic for Saturday looked a bit more normal with a uniques to page views of 1:1.5 however late Saturday night it changed again and for the last 14 hours I have gone back to precisely 1:1. This is plalinly ludicrous, after years of data I know that whilst I do have many one page view visitors I also have more who are multiple page view visitors.

How is G managing to do this?

[superclown2]

That smacks of hyperbole,

That smacks to me of telling it like it is.

[RubicCubed]

How is G managing to do this?

In the USA Google's Chrome has nearly 59% market share. I have long believed Chrome sends detailed data back home with few disabling this. I believe Google combines this data, along with any other Google code on the site (GA, Ads, Fonts), to profile not just user behavior but also the website. With this information I believe Google can tell which users are likely to bounce, browse and buy so that Google can best direct users to a destination that provides maximum benefit for Google.

[RedBar]

But so far today 18% of my page views have been on IOS Safari ... I doubt Apple's sharing that info?

I'm now at 17+ hours and have had only two visitors who have looked at more than one page from 14 countries ... I think I'm going nuts!

[RedBar]

I've just finished going through the logs for 10 of my global .com sites and ALL of them experienced a 50% drop in traffic on Wednesday / Thursday a few days ago. Their commonality is that none of them are registered USA businesses, they are all bulk B2B exporting businesses from various widget trade supplying countries for between 25 to 50+ years.

Are non-US businesses / exporters in general, seeing another tightening of localisation SERPs? I have no idea at the moment therefore is anyone else seeing similar?

[EditorialGuy]

today 18% of my page views have been on IOS Safari ... I doubt Apple's sharing that info?

Good point. Safari is normally our top browser (just ahead of Chrome), with nearly half of our browser traffic.

[tom_010101]

So what went up slightly on my site in the last few weeks is now completely down again. Honestly, I have no idea why or why. At the moment it looks like the project can be buried.

[Martin Ice Web]

Traffic is rock bottom. Domain crowding is back. Desktop search is now in infiniti mode.
Low or Zero Content sites are in top #10

If you compare webmaster guidelines and search then it you have just to do the opposite of what is said in webmaster guidelines.

[RedBar]

My almost 1:1 continued until 04.00 this Monday and since then multiple page views have gone back to normal so far.

The most unusual "coincidence" in all of this is that I have had zero email spam Saturday, Sunday and this morning.

There's absolutely no manipulation going on here is there?