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]

[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?

[Micha]

@Martin Ice Web

I talked to some German store owners yesterday and they all said exactly the same thing you are reporting here. I see this in a friend's store as well. If you search specifically for products he has on offer, complete nonsense appears on the first page of Google (after the even more nonsensical advertising).

[superclown2]

I don't know if others have noticed this already but I'm seeing PAA now labelled 'Others Want To Know' (they may well do: I don't) on desktop. This seems to go on for ever and it's full of stuff that's hardly relevant to the search term I put in, so I scroll right past all four blocks of it; which means I completely miss the first two genuine SERPs, which are hidden between the ads (which fill a full screen on my monitor) and the 'OWTK'. So: to me the third real search result is the first one I look at.

What a mess this once-brilliant search engine has become.

[Conro]

@superclown2 probably google remove the paa and use owtk. All is for new search and new clic to ads 🤮

[Martin Ice Web]

Yeah, if google search would go through their own algo it would probably not reach the end because i is so spammy and full of ads.

Oh, hold my beer, that is just what the current algo spits out.

[ErrlyBird]

Anyone else seeing massive traffic drops on SEMrush? Not seeing drastic changes in traffic on UA.

[tom_010101]

What I don't understand is, if Google really 'kills' the 'relevant websites', then Adsense should hardly run anymore and consequently Adwords too, since no one would book ads anymore, right?

[Conro]

@tom_010101 for Google adsense and adwords is necessary a intermediary or all is "for trust". You have trust in google? I not

[RedBar]

no one would book ads anymore, right?

Wrong, G is already a classified ads site and many users seem to accept it as such therefore those advertisers paying to be there will continue paying IF they get a return on their investment.

The big difference between traditional newspaper and online classified ads is that online the effectiveness can be evaluated so much more accurately.

[mhansen]

Anyone else seeing massive traffic drops on SEMrush?

I've seen roughly a 25% increase in exposure in SEMRush since this latest update began (SEMR reporting tends to lag real-world), and looking through GSC it's a 34% increase in impressions, and 13% increase in CTR.

Note: I only measured a 4 day period from US Labor Day through Friday (9/5 - 9/8) and compared it to the same weekdays before the update was announced. (A Tues-Fri in mid-August).

[BigKat]

G is already a classified ads site and many users seem to accept it as such therefore those advertisers paying to be there will continue paying IF they get a return on their investment.

And with a limited number of advertisers, all selling similar rebranded products in our industry, shoppers will continue to search elsewhere. Hopefully some of these shoppers will realize Google's search results are the thin spammy pages I and others see them as. I have and will continue pruning products from our free Google product feed. Being a manufacturer and retailer, I'm sure our prices will increase because of Google's games which will also be passed along to taxpayers as we also sell B2G.

Nothing is really new for us since the core update. SERPS for product queries require scrolling to see organic results. Between text ads and product ads visible, shoppers have 4 companies to choose from with Amazon consuming the largest percentage of these ads.

[mhansen]

SERPS for product queries

My wife has had a small single product-type wholesale site for roughly 15 years, selling a specific type of product to boutique retailers, but only in bulk since she is a wholesaler and doesn't mess around with single item sales. She's never been into SEO and gets a majority of her traffic from her own FB groups, Insta, repeat buyers and other social media venues where she is active.

I have however, kept watch on the organic traffic and over the last 2 years she's seen nearly all organic traffic to her site dry up, even though it appears well positioned in SERP's, and even when people search for very specific things, adding her business name to the query. The reason (that I came to) is that Google no longer cares about the query match and shows the user what it wants them to find. If someone searches for "her business + wholesale + product-type", she gains the organic #1 position, but after the full page of ads, then very well mixed into the rest of the product ads for the "product-type".

I handle PPC for a client who's in a specific SaaS market, and over the same period, Google no longer allows us to target the [exact match] of their business name with their specific SaaS product or product type. Even when someone searches for their exact brand + their 25 yr branded software, their ads do not show unless we also target the broad match version of the sotware-type with an ad to spawn the higher cost PPC ads.

Basically, Google knows where it's money is and will always defer to that stream above all else, including the users and what they really want. Kind of like a grocery store putting the highest profit margin items at eye level.

[ErrlyBird]

@mhansen

It appears to be industry wide for my niche. All competitors have taken the plunge as well. Firearms niche. Im talking 30+% drops industry wide.

[mhansen]

@Errlybird -

I have a client (SEO and site management only, WordPress/WooCommerce) in the same market (firearm accessories) who saw an 8% gain in SEMR, slightly more in GA4. The site is SLOW due to heavy graphics, video, etc. They do have a heavy YT presence as well. US based.

[renatovieira]

Veeeery slow today....

[Fluff_Nutz]

I can only agree with everyone else. I thought last Thursday was the worst day for traffic but nope. Despite constantly publishing new content, Monday seems to be real slow and I am probably right in saying it will be the worst day of the month, thus far. For me anyway. Very slow and disappointing. It's funny because last Monday was the best day of the month. What a complete turn around in a... negative direction. I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

[Martin Ice Web]

this last core update for sure targeted transactional queries and explicit traffic to unique seller items has completly vanished. ( bad for users).
For now we are seeing amazon sales rising and rising since the core update.

As a user i don´t like the UI from google anymore. It is confusing and littered with unimportant "subcontent". with all the ads and stupid content between the results it feels more like i am on "Bild" website.

[RubicCubed]

For now we are seeing amazon sales rising and rising since the core update.

I would expect this as Amazon captures most of the traffic and sales from Google search results that are mostly Amazon ads with organic results hidden deep below the ads.

[jellyfish]

Something definitely occurred at the very end of the Core update, if SEMrush competitor data in my niche is to be believed, some sites experienced up to 60% organic traffic reduction. Few sites have appeared to recover yet too. It appeared to target independent sites including larger independent sites too, however the giants/brands of my niche barely moved. For my site, it has seen a 25% organic traffic drop from the 8-11th Sep, which has yet to recover.

[RedBar]

IMHO this update is not yet quite finished, some things still seem to be rolling-out / finalising. I say that simply because I am not seeing consistent traffic compared to pre-update, I'm still seeing unusual spikes and troughs.

For our UK venue site traffic for September so far v August is at 80% BUT is at 110% v September 2022. Sept is always an unpredictable month after school holidays and back to work etc. Some of our other localised UK sites are seeing very simllar yet no disaster zones as yet.

For my main global site multiple page views have been improving with overall PVs incresing BUT I have seen some periods of almost zero traffic when this site would traditionally be extremely busy thus making me feel the update is not yet completed across all data centres.

[mosxu]

I notice traffic on brand name being played with!
Almost half of branded traffic is filled with secret ingredients now!