Google Update: September 2023

[Micha]

https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/5092521.htm [webmasterworld.com] by brett_tabke - 7:25 pm on Sep 14, 2023 (cst -5)

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And the next update is running ... [status.search.google.com ]

[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 12:27 am (utc) on Sep 15, 2023]
[edit reason] Update deserved it's own thread [/edit]

[rustybrick]

This HCU update does not seem that big, am I wrong? I was expecting a lot more chatter.

[StupidIntelligent]

@Barry

A page that was deleted over a month ago, has now started ranking for many keywords during this update.

This means that Google extracts data on pages for ranking weeks before, launching the update. So, any quality changes you make will literally take months to take effect.

There isn't any synchronization between their crawling, indexing and ranking systems, else their algos wouldn't rank and display pages that haven't existed for weeks.

[renatovieira]

@rustybrick - In the first few days, it seemed like it was something intense. But it has stabilized for now. Slight movements so far, everything is warm...

[rustybrick]

Appreciate the feedback! Thank you.

[RedBar]

This means that Google extracts data on pages for ranking weeks before, launching the update. So, any quality changes you make will literally take months to take effect.

I completely agree and this has been on-going for probably at least 2-3 years now with G ranking non-existent pages. For localised rankings in the UK I have no issues whatsoever at the moment however for international I need to allow at least 6 months minimum and even then nothing may happen even though the current SERPs may be extremely poor.

[Dalnoon]

UK traffic is down ~40% for today. First day seeing changes since the update was announced, not sure if it's gonna stay or not.

[RedBar]

As of last Wednesday 13th Sept, my UK-focussed (97% UK) hotel events' site, has recovered all its losses and is now averaging higher PVs than previously. I'll wait until the end of the month to see if this sticks!

[Alex_1729]

The HCU is killing my 10-month old informational site. Yesterday -20% organic traffic compared to last week, today will end up being about -45%. I am hoping for a full recovery as with the August update, but this looks bad. Really bad. I tried my best with this site, I have proper topical authority, topical clusters, interlinking is excellent, and the blog posts are extremely helpful to the best of my abilities. This is ludicrous if it remains.

[watesh]

Well, this Helpful Content update reversed all the gains from the August Core Update.

[RedBar]

@Alex_1729

My main international site is 30 years old, yep seriously, and it is yo-yoing all over the place, just where will this manipulation end? I'm guessing possibly even pay to be indexed!

[Fluff_Nutz]

@Alex_1729
I hear you. I too have an informational site. Though slightly just over 2 years old now. For me yesterday was -13% compared to last week and today is looking to be worse than the previous few days. Sucks too as its generally this time of year when the site is at its best.

To be honest these updates don't seem to end. It started middle of August and never stopped and we are now closing in on October. Non-stop traffic reduction. Drops after drops. Probably since August I have probably lost around 60-70% traffic altogether. I'm almost questioning if this is even worth it any more.

I recently hired two writers for the site. They are very keen and are great to work with. Very consistent. So I'm forever having new articles posted. All of which are SEO, interlinked and everything else. Still cannot get any consistent spikes or growth though. It was never this inconsistent when I first started out.

Anyway long story short, I just let my writers focus on the website now. Whilst I work on my Youtube channel. The more I look at the reduced traffic for the site the more frustrating it gets. Plus I find Youtube to be more stable, consistent and way more fun too.

[Samsam1978]

For once, seeing an uplift in traffic since these last updates. It might go back down in a few days who knows.

[bonehead84]

@Fluff_Nutz, you said "Probably since August I have probably lost around 60-70% traffic altogether. I'm almost questioning if this is even worth it any more.".

I fired my team today and am moving my site to a cheaper server so it can live there and hopefully keep bringing in tiny bits of money and am halting all work on it. I'm down 80% with no sign of the trajectory changing. The site has almost 1,000 human written articles over the past few years. Went from between $12k - $15k per month to what will be $3k next month (if nothing gets worse). And that's right now.... just wait till Q1 halves the advertising budgets.

After 14 years, I'm probably about to quit SEO altogether finally and likely get a day job of some sort.

[ichthyous]

It seems that traffic is slowly bouncing back to the levels before this latest 'helpful' update. USA is up 19% by 5pm today. UK is up 157% and UAE is up 128%. Only Canada (-53%), Germany (-42%) and Australia (-38%) are down.

[edited by: ichthyous at 9:11 pm (utc) on Sep 19, 2023]

[christianz]

So far approx -15% for my 16 year old, niche authority, highly relevant and helpful information site. It tanks further every day, especially US traffic.

Google's AI is working great!

[Cyril TechWebsites]

Facing with a big drop again, through majority of the articles. Everything is dying, you can't do nothing with it. There is no hope for anyone, these criminals are just destroying the internet. Hope that the time will come when we will see those bandits in the court. I don't know what to do more, there is no way to stop the falling. It seems they will just destroy "unhelpful" websites to absolute zero.

[headspace]

This helpful content update and the draconian sanction of removing your site from the index is a gross abuse of monopolistic power. The cowards say it's not a manual action in order to prevent you from having any means of challenging the decision to de-index you.

They appear to be targetting sites that aggregate information from across the internet which is the very foundation of how the internet has evolved. Too many companies seem to think the internet is there own private space to behave how they would want it to. It is a public space designed to legally disseminate information in all of its forms.

If I am looking for work and I come across a job aggregator site that does nothing but aggregate content from thousands of other job sites why would that not be helpful to me? The aggregator site has no relation to the sites it scraped the data from but it doesn't make the site any less helpful to me looking for work.

The fact of the matter is that all aggregators sites by default are 'search engine first' because they make it easy to find information spread across the internet.

But most aggregators would fall foul of this helpful content nonense and be de-indexed simply because there is no relationship between the source sites and the aggregator. The aggregator needs no direct expertise on the subject matter other than how to pull the data together, but what's wrong with that?, even if it is AI generated?
If the day ever arrives where you need expertise in a subject matter to put a website together that would be a very sad day!

[Conro]

I believe Google has been left in the hands of an intern or there's a saboteur on their team. The search engine has become poor and can't find what you're looking for anymore, Google AdSense no longer counts clicks, and despite complaints in the community, there's no response. It seems like Google is about to fail and is firing its last shots

[ayberk]

I became a member to write a comment on this thread.

As of yesterday, our website, which we have been weaving like an embroidery for 1 year, was DESTROYED. Nearly 1000 original articles. All extremely comprehensive (even NASA had referenced it) and "HELPFUL."

And our 1-year work and source of revenue collapsed in an instant. I hope this is a fluctuation. Because my brother and I have worked very hard.

[Dalnoon]

@ayberk, sad to hear dude. I hope you find a way to reverse it.
Are you publishing on Wordpress?

I was wondering if too many tag/category/feed pages are the reason why our website is tanking. Since these pages are mostly "thin" content by nature.
My feed/tag pages are enabled by default since I'm using WordPress and I just realized I have more than 5k not indexed pages (mostly feed pages).

also, what is more weird is that we have had 3 Google HCUs, (August 2022, Dec 2022 and now Sep 2023) and my website pumped heavily on the first one (almost 50% added to the traffic) but then lost 50% on the 2nd one and now around 35% on this one. So idk, Google can't decide if my content is helpful or what.

[Soulofmonk]

My 7-year-old site is 15-20% down since Monday. I'm tired of this grind—one week up, next week down. Traffic does not increase at all. On top of it, lower ad revenue.

[renatovieira]

Huge drop yesterday...

[RareBit]

We are finally seeing some stability today and have gone back to our top positions for quite a few keywords.

[ayberk]

@dalnoon

We use WordPress. The only things indexed are posts. Tags, categories, archives and subpages are not indexed. In fact, we have been growing 25–35% every month since the day we opened the site. In the last month, the growth stopped, and this month came the big crash.

The more I see the sites brought to our place, the more depressed I get. Most of them have "thin content". Also, Quora was brought to first place instead of our top articles.

[Shepherd]

Since the update, been seeing a lot of this for new content:
Page is not indexed: Discovered - currently not indexed

Could be we hit the sitewide trigger for (non)HC or it could be a crawl issue, no way to know with google.

[MayankParmar]

Indexing issues, anyone? It started with "Page is not indexed: Discovered - currently not indexed" for new posts, and now the console page is indexed, but it is not in the SERP.

[Soulofmonk]

Many people on Reddit and FB groups are reporting massive drops since yesterday: 20%, 40%, and even 60%. This is ridiculous.
[twitter.com ]
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[reddit.com ]
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[KaseyM]

Had indexing issues yesterday.

Traffic way way down. Been flat for nearly a year but first dip from an update here.

Seeing on SEMRush some sites tanking by up to 70%!

[jatin]

My 7 year old website was ranking for multiple competative keyphrases in top stories and Google news above legacy websites but its down to absolute 0 now. But our Discover coverage has been which is a bit weird. So it is all from Discover only right now.

[RedBar]

The last couple of days I have seen some huge spikes from individual users, one Oz visitor alone was 500+ pages with several more in the 100-200 page range, consequently this has pushed-up my levels to 224% of its average, however as yet this has not driven any new business enquiries from those areas. Not so far in the past I would see multiple page view visitors and then within a few days a valid enquiry ... we'll see what the next week brings.