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]

[Soulofmonk]

More drop yesterday. Now the main site has lost 25% of its traffic.

[Conro]

@Sheperd If you look at the website traffic chart johnmu.com on semrush, you can see that updates are negatively impacting your site as well, even though you should have a consistently upward trend, given your knowledge of how your algorithms work. If JohnMu can't keep your site performing well, I don't think your advice is valuable

[Cyril TechWebsites]

Well, facing with further drop today, mostly 80% or URLs are affected. They became "unhelpful" over 3 days.

The results are around:

Google | -30%
Bing is at hostorical maximum
Direct traffic at historical maximum
Yahoo, DDG etc - having positive trends for years

So, it seems that my website is not helpful only for Google users.

[BlueEyes82]

Even if precise analyzes are still missing, I wouldn't know what I should change in contrast to other updates. One can only hope that Google - as it has often done - takes a step backwards and at least turns the screw on authority.

As written, this is primarily an “authoritarian update” and not a “helpful content” update. Although my pages have many voluntary links from strong and large sites, but these will not have the authority of a PC magazine or newspaper.

[christianz]

As long as EAT is a dominant ranking factor, things will only get worse. I would like to go back to time when ranking was based on merit, not wallet size.

[Conro]

I am convinced that all the updates are only meant to increase Google's revenue. Forget about the quality of the SERP and other things Google talks about to keep us happy (we have eyes to see). So, do I really have to believe that in 25 years of Google's existence, they still haven't found a way to rank websites based on quality and content without sites going up or down based on updates? If a site is excellent now, I don't see why it should then plummet with the next update, only to rise again with the next one. This makes it clear that updates are only meant to shuffle the deck, nothing more.

[Martin Ice Web]

so far the HCU restored some old rankings for us. Last days have been ok with more traffic and conversions. But conversions died over last night.
It seems that google does heavy brands filtering as our own brands item are suffering a lot. Items with no brands are now selling better.

[Soulofmonk]

My other website, which I stopped working on last year, is suddenly getting massive visibility off very old, irrelevant articles.

[Treud]

super huge surge the last 2 days, and then it went back to low / normal..

[Fluff_Nutz]

A mere +2% for yesterday compared to the previous day. Whilst today looks on course for -30%, if not more, Yet I have done nothing different when compared to what I originally started the site with. I was always sticking to my chosen niche. Never writing about other subjects that do not relate. If anything I learnt after the hit in October to write longer articles with SEO included. Is it the SEO and interlinking that is at fault? Doubt it. After all SEO seems to be the rave these days. Other than that I made zer0 changes. Yet I still continue to loose traffic. Ever since October last year my site has never been given a chance to grow. Before October the site was great. Give me hope of an ambition for the future. Little did I know..

As I have said time and time again. Make your website perfect. 100% glamorous. Stick to the Google guidelines and yet, you will still get smacked. Why? Because all of these updates and guidelines are excuses for the true real picture behind the scenes. G need to cover their own @sses and they do so by pretending to improve their SERPs. I see no improvements. Just the same sites at the top over and over. Not because they are relevant but because they are useful to G. Whatever makes them money. No matter the cost. Hence the vast amount of lawsuits, fines, court cases. They are out of control. Face facts.

Also, as someone mentioned before the same CEO for Google is the exact same for Alphabet. Two companies, granted I barely know about Alphabet but being the so called ''mother ship'' it has to be considered as a rather big corporation too. Being the CEO of two companies is going to cost money. So where do they fall upon to cover that? It's Game Over. Unless a miracle comes in from somewhere.

Another thing that really grinds my gears from my recent research is that those who have an AI site seem to be winning this fight. So Google are prioritising AI content over human written content. Ridiculous. My source for this comes mainly from Reddit. Speaking of which, also mentioned over on Reddit. As well as AI G are also increasing traffic to both Reddit itself and Quora. The latter two I like. I often visit. Especially Reddit. However, answer me this. Are they really helpful and trustworthy? Especially during a HCU. Same for Wikipedia. Where, again, anyone can edit and write. Granted the algo will never know what is truth and what is not so hence the domain authority dominance. Yet, that does not technically mean that it is all 100% reliable. In fact I'm saying that AI content and messageboards are winning this fight, all of which are taken from these apparent trust worthy sources. Are they?

The algo will never be perfect. There are so many loop holes and inconsistencies. Yet it would be nice if we could just let our sites grow for a few months. Without any hiccups.

[Mark_A]

It is all very well bemoaning that one site or another isn't on P1 anymore, but how many sites are there competing in that space and there can only be 10 (or less) organic sites on P1? Why genuinely should it be you?

[Fluff_Nutz]

@Mark_A

Well that can also be met with the opposite too. Why should it always be them? Time and time again its the same websites at the top. They have to be there because it benefits G more. At least swap it around a bit. Those big sites don't need to be top by now their recognition should be enough to warrant their returning traffic. It's like the Premier League football table, always the same clubs at the top. It's boring. I'm sure those who are searching would also love to see new sites. Well, who knows?

Either way how can anyone grow with the same sites always at the top. It has to do with pleasing G and their greed. It's almost impossible to get recognition for a smaller site now. Facebook and Twitter are making it difficult to get spotted let alone the G SERPs too

[ichthyous]

I also saw a big surge in traffic over the last few days, with even USA traffic up 13% yesterday. Search traffic was up 28% and 21% on those days, and multiple customer inquiries as well. Today USA is -32% at noon though so perhaps it's fading. I am seeing a drop at mid day every day in general, then a surge later in the day.

[RedBar]

Have I gained, have I a new type of traffic? I'm seeing another spikey day with traffic so far today at 200% and for the week an almost 4:1 page views to uniques whereas only last week I was 1:1

I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever has been started is nowhere near finished as yet!

[EditorialGuy]

Does that mean Google's own product aggregations, flight comparison pages etc. are "unhelpful content" too?

No, it could simply mean that Google regards automated or template-based comparison pages as duplicative (in much the same way as Google didn't want to rank other search engines' SERPs a couple of decades ago, on the theory that searchers didn't want a search result to send them off to yet another list of search results).

If you're doing pretty much what Google does (even if you were doing it before Google began doing it), you need to find another way to provide added value for searcher. That may seem unfair, but sometimes you have to be pragmatic.

[mhansen]

Google's own product aggregations, flight comparison pages etc. are "unhelpful content" too?

I'm not being harsh, but if billions of people typed my domain/business website into the address bar and go directly to my site without ever visiting a search engine, I'd be able to do whatever I want, regardless of what I tell others to do. The problem us website business owners have, is that billions of users go to Google first. It's their customers, their traffic, their algo, etc. If we want those search visitors to find us, we're at the mercy of their gatekeeping, or we need to find other ways to get those visitors to our business without ever touching Google search. (An overall best practice anyway)

For me, during the Core update in August, I saw roughly a 25-30% increase in search users come to the site from Google. These were much better targeted users that generated higher inquiries, conversions, and higher quality traffic. :)

Fast forward 2 weeks and it looks like my hopes of being a trusted authority in my industry were false, as I'm now seeing a roughly 40% week over week drop in search exposure, users, conversions, and targeted users. The gatekeeper giveth and the gatekeeper taketh away. :(

What I see displacing many in SERPs is questionable at best, with low quality outdated content, and outside of the Forbes-type sites, many domains (.ru, etc) that are not even relevant to my country (USA). I see a lot more content from local companies (though not local to me) across the world. This seems like another EEAT signal focused on people with first-hand knowledge, IMO. It could also be Google measuring these sites with meaningful traffic and preparing to dump them back to the bottom of the results, who knows?

On the positive side, I've also seen some of the industry leaders (well known brands/publishers) that I have competed with for several years in my corner of the web, recover from the hits they took over the previous 8-10 months after the last HCU, and regaining nearly 100% of their search relevance and traffic. Those are the examples I'll dig into to learn what they are doing differently and learn how I can apply it to myself. I won't do anything though until they announce the update is complete, and then give it another week or two to see what happens in tools that lag broad data. (SEMR, etc)

[Martin Ice Web]

Traffic is up and its now at pre August core levels. But the NCTU ( No Conversions Traffic Update) kicked in.

[Fluff_Nutz]

I am now back to July levels of traffic. Another -20%. This morning, we are once again, all over the place. Yet I know if G left me alone right now my site would be doing wonders. I am getting approvals on my articles and people are actually starting to comment on them too. So yes I can't help but feel that if I was left alone, you know, to actually grow for a bit. Which is impossible with G and their immediate need to make rivals with their users. That my numbers would be saying quite a different story.

[RedBar]

From UK 21.00 Thursday until 10.00 this morning I had very low traffic again but at 10.00 and the last 5 hours I've been spiking up and down similar to every day this week. Before 10.00 I was at 21% of average, now I'm at 128.5%, yesterday ended at 241%, these fluctuations are way outside of my long-term spreads.

[Helix Online]

The August core update improved my traffic, only to be destroyed by the September Helpful Content Update. On Monday the 18th, my site lost 15% of traffic overnight. On Tuesday the 19th, I lost 32%, and on Wednesday the 20th, I lost 35%. Yesterday's (the 21st) losses are at -32%, so it seems my website will survive without further damage. Still, losing one-third of my traffic overnight stings.

Most of my top keywords have decreased in rankings. For some reason, a handful of my top keywords have still kept their #1 spots. I don't see any difference in quality between the posts that have been affected and the ones that haven't. High DA sites, irrelevant posts, and pure-AI blogs have replaced my website at the top of page 1. The high DA sites don't specialize in my niche, they just write posts in my niche to get traffic because they've figured out there are good keywords.

And for some keywords, image packs and PAA sections have taken my #1 spot. Like for one of my top keywords, I was #1 before. Now I'm #3 with the image pack taking the #1 spot and the PAA section the second one. Yesterday (or the day before that), a competing site had taken my #1 spot, but now Google has swapped it again.

I got hit by the March core update too, but it was nothing like this. Now my site has been slaughtered, and the same seems to be happening to pretty much all small sites. I pray that things will return to normal after this update is over. But waiting for the outcome is torture. I did recover from the March update, but not instantly. There's no way this can last because the search results are madness now.

Even if things return back to normal, we, the small website owners, lose money while waiting for it to happen. We literally pay the price for these Google games.

By the way, does anyone know what exactly the fake freshness means in this new update? I know some websites change the publish date to a recent one. I don't do that. I have both the original publish date and the latest update date visible in my posts. Should I hide the "updated on" date from my posts? I mean, if you just fix a typo or change a tag, that could be interpreted as "faking freshness" because it changes the "updated on" date without significant changes to the post.

[Sodero18]

I have read this forum for a while now but have not submitted a post before. I usually drop in when traffic drops to see if something is going on. Obviously, when traffic drops more than 50% for no good reason, it's concerning. I can see why some other posters are considering getting out of SEO.

If G continues on this road, there won't be anyone to write original content for AI to steal. If they want to allow AI generated content, that's one thing but human generated content should still take priority or "first created" content.

One of my concerns with the recent very unhelpful update is AI is copying content which is not better and ranks higher. The fake fresh content piece is extremely problematic for those who post events / courses. It's common to add a new date for a recurring event or course but, if I understand correctly, G looks at this as fake fresh content. Hopefully G will recognize this as a problem and fix it sooner rather than later.

It strikes me as really silly to add a reviewer of content as some type of validation. Now we'll just have fake reviewers.

[BigKat]

One of my concerns with the recent very unhelpful update is AI is copying content which is not better and ranks higher.

Google could have given preference to original content years ago, but that would have cost them money and actually benefited the entire internet. Now Google finds itself incapable of dealing with the flood of AI content, but does it really matter to them when Google is flooding the SERPS with ads? Unfortunately we're the ones feeling the pain as all we can do is watch AI take over the SERPS and the internet or mass produce AI content and feed the machine like others are doing.

Regardless, welcome to the forum Sodero18 and the growing club of those suffering huge traffic losses from ads, AI, parasite pages, etc.

[Sodero18]

Thanks BigKat :)

[RedBar]

Google could have given preference to original content years ago,

When G first started it did give preference to both information and images to the original source however I think it was the mid 00s that this changed and when the 2010 G images theft came along that was it, G basically owned everything for free. I believe Getty Images did have a settlment with G but they also were sued for copyrights etc.

[ichthyous]

I am finding many more pages shown as "Crawled - Not Currently Indexed" in Google Search Console. Pages that have been indexed for years are now not. I read someone else posting the same on here recently...has anyone observed this? The daily limit on submitting urls for indexing is very annoying.

[BigKat]

@RedBar

I'm not aware of Google giving preference to original pages over that which was copied/spun. I do recall there was a longstanding belief that copied/spun content outranking the original was the result of an alleged penalty against the original site. I believe this belief started going by the wayside as squeaky clean small/weak sites were getting scraped, their pages posted/ranked elsewhere (Blogspot was a big one) and as Google began to report more penalties within WMT. Of course my recollection may be a bit fuzzy, isolated to my industry and admittedly doesn't apply to image search.

[RedBar]

@BigKat
I'm fairly sure someone else will remember that G did used to attribute original sources and especially so images. Along with many others I worked on the algo in the late 90s and that was one of its default attributes, I have thousands of original high quality images on my specialised widget and from 1993 for about 10 years I used to encourage other widget sites to use them since so many sites had extremely poor images and until 2003-5 time many images were copied but secure in the fact that G knew the original source I always ranked #1.

Then it suddenly changed and I was being outranked for my own images by scrapers left right and centre, one of them was a MySpace image sourcing site and for a period of about 3-4 months I had one image alone being downloaded more than 100,000+ times a day, yes, every day!

Of course the major change was when G decided that branding authority came along which basically handed major news organisations and publishers a blank cheque to basically copy millions of high quality small and hobby sites, their perceived "quality" was the death knell for many and this continues until today.

[BigKat]

You may be correct with image search, which I noted above my recollection doesn't apply to image search as it wasn't ever a large source of traffic for us and didn't get as much attention as our pages.

Looking back it's funny to see how much of our work has been consumed and monetized by others and what little recourse we have.

[renatovieira]

This morning I see a significant increase in traffic overall. Big changes in my main keyword.

Did anyone else notice anything today?

[RedBar]

Did anyone else notice anything today?

For quite some time Saturdays have been my lowest day of the week and today is no different with coming up to 14 hours of my Googleday I'm at 24.5%.

Compare that to this crazy spikey week Monday to Friday at 191% which has generated zero extra genuine business enquiries.

[Soulofmonk]

After the recent update, which favored discussion forms, people in my niche have already started creating fake Reddit and Quora threads with links to their sites. Lol.

[Fluff_Nutz]

@Soulofmonk

I really don't blame them for that. Getting knocked down by these updates. All of your work and time being spent almost feeling like a waste. Worst of all your revenue also get murdered too. How can site owners continue to keep their businesses and pay their workers if this keeps up?

In truth this update could and by the looks of the garbage that are currently hogging top spots, it should be reversed so I cannot say if it will eventually be a waste of time. But from a business perspective. Time is everything and they cannot afford to loose so much revenue. These ridiculous Google games are really quite annoying. They are continuous in frequency and last for a long time really. In fact, as I have said before, these updates have been non-stop since mid August. Its killing these businesses so I'm not surprised their lack of patience has forced them to do what you mentioned. I should join in with them to be honest. My traffic has decreased back to July levels now. Today seems to have started strong but I have no faith or trust in Google. It's a mess.

[Sodero18]

The fake fresh content piece keeps coming up as top of mind for me and I see posts and pages dropping for no reason.

In the event that they don't reverse this update, it would make sense to me for G to write if / then statements for event and product pages to disregard minor changes as it is common for product info and dates to change.

Something else that I think may pose a major problem is blog / post modules that millions of web site use. If you add a new post, hundreds (or more) posts / pages could then populate with the new post. Is this considered to be fake fresh content? If so, all posts / pages with blog / post modules would be penalized and rank would drop. I'm hoping this update would not be this unhelpful and cause even more of a mess.

[Brett_Tabke]

I just hope everyone gets that this is nothing but paving the way for what comes next. The full AI 'answer engine' is coming. It will eliminate most all off Google links from page one (other than ads) Everything from now until then, is basically like rearranging deck chairs on the titanic for AI to take over.

[superclown2]

The full AI 'answer engine' is coming. It will eliminate most all off Google links from page one (other than ads)

You may be right but I hope you're wrong. This would be the 'bravest' step that Google had ever taken, abandoning a mega money spinning system for one that would cost a fortune to run and which might just bring in far less money. Plus, can you imagine the flurry of legislation it would bring?

According to documents released by US government plaintiffs [url]https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24940081/416304.pdf[/url] organic clicks are still in the vast majority. Will visitors be content with an answer from Bard (which may or may not correct) when they are looking for websites to browse?

Bing has gone down the AI route but I haven't seen much of an increase in market share for them. I wouldn't be surprised if Bard proves to be yet another loss making other bet that they throw effort and megabucks at only to eventually abandon it. Here is some more interesting reading: [killedbygoogle.com ]

killedbygoogle.com propertyog:title =Killed by Google propertyog:description =Killed by Google is the open source list of dead Google products, services, and devices. It serves as a tribute and memorial of beloved services and products killed by Google.

[Conro]

Google Cemetery [killedbygoogle.com...] . Will the next one be Google's search engine? I would see artificial intelligence that responds well on Google Maps or Google Home, on an intelligent system for cars, but on the search engine, it's a foregone suicide and also goes against all ethics

killedbygoogle.com propertyog:title =Killed by Google propertyog:description =Killed by Google is the open source list of dead Google products, services, and devices. It serves as a tribute and memorial of beloved services and products killed by Google.

[Shepherd]

The full AI 'answer engine' is coming.

Well, maybe then the traffic from google ads will be less garbagy than it is now...

[puckparches]

I have a website with thousands of semi-original content pages. These are complex topics extracted from manuals, rewritten in simpler terms with a touch of my own experience. A few months ago, I added my own chatbot (although not as advanced as ChatGPT). However, I've noticed that people hardly use it. I don't think it's because of the chatbot's quality, but rather because people prefer searching for information and reading instead of engaging in a chat. So, I doubt a "full AI 'answer engine' is coming"

[Conro]

Currently, Google has lost its exact match in finding relevant websites based on many searches I've tried to perform. Instead of progressing, it has regressed, as if what was once the third page of Google is now the first for many searches. I tried the same search with Bing and DuckDuckGo, and their relevance in finding websites for each search I did is much more accurate. Someone may be sabotaging Google; otherwise, I can't explain it.

[superclown2]

Currently, Google has lost its exact match in finding relevant websites based on many searches I've tried to perform.

I suspect that this has as much to do with processing power as anything else. It is much cheaper and quicker to spit out plain vanilla results than to dig deeper into the long tail.

The result is a further degradation of the value of Google as a search engine, rather than an advertising agency, producing 'good enough for most people' search results which are secondary to their main purpose - which is increasing shareholder value.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

I don't know where Googler's are looking at, but in my niche (IT tutorials) when you are searching in Google right now you are facing with outdated irrelevant results on different websites, with forums, Reddit and Quora. They have nothing to do with solving issues. I don't know why, but my Bing traffic started increasing pretty fast with this "helpful" update (I'm on the 1 spot on many keywords that are on the second page in Google's SERP). I hope that people started migrating from Google to Bing because they can't find nothing but only ads and irrelevant results there. Hope that this pattern will stick, and people will realize that there are a lot of other possibilities to look for the information throughout the Internet, not only Google exist. Is anyone seeing some gains from Bing since the HCU?

[Soulofmonk]

I really don't see a rollback happening. And, I agree it is sad to see people put their heart & passion into making something and not seeing long-term results, but things can be both heart-made & not as helpful as the makers want.

-JohnMu
[twitter.com ]

[Fluff_Nutz]

''The problem I often see is that the "website" is just respinning Reddit content, often even indirectly. I'd much prefer to get the original, hands-on posts, written by people who actually did what they're writing about. 5 years old? Still better than a month-old AI/cheap rewrite''

Also JohnMu.

I really don't think that most people use Reddit for their content articles. I for sure do not. I write every article based on experience. I love the niche I'm in and it has basically been a part of my life for many generations.I even include videos to backup everything that is written. This video is, of course, created by myself. Using Reddit is a basic excuse to cover their own @asses and to, once again, proove that Google has become a mess and a joke of a search engine.

I'll admit a lot of information on websites are taken, and technically stolen, but usually from other websites. Which I hardly doubt is Reddit. I have had my own written articles spun by others countless times by higher authority websites. Also users on Reddit take stuff from other websites. So it basically contradicts itself. Everyone is stealing content. They are all basically as bad as each other. Yet G love to contradict themselves. They even steal our content just because it is on their search.

[superclown2]

and also goes against all ethics

That hasn't stopped them since they drove a coach and horses through accepted standards of copyright and personal property a couple of decades ago; and they have been allowed to push the envelope ever since..

It is vital to remember that Google is a company devoted, quite rightly, to making money. It is not a utility like water, fuel, or transport so it has (at present) no obligations whatsoever towards any creators of websites.

We find ourselves in a situation in which a single company can arbitrate on whether or not businesses throughout the world flourish, survive, or die. It is crazy, but it's the way it is. Relying on Google to support us by voluntarily behaving 'ethically' (and actually providing good search results for minority queries, when it is more profitable not to do so) is pointless.

In the meanwhile; the SERPs over here in the UK are getting more and more filled up with AI generated junk and much of this is floating towards the top because of domain authority. It must be a real problem for Google to sort all this out and I'm sure that a lot of the turmoil we are seeing right now is a result of their attempts to get a grip on it.

[Shepherd]

Another fail for the HCU... fake "update dates" and fake professional titles/profiles running even more rampant now, good job* google.

*sarcasm. (https://duckduckgo.com/?t=h_&q=sarcasm&ia=definition)

[christianz]

In the meanwhile; the SERPs over here in the UK are getting more and more filled up with AI generated junk

What is the value of these pages? If I want AI generated text based on 2 year old snapshot of the internet, I can go to Bing Chat or ChatGPT and get AI text tailor made for my query/needs.

What's the point of clogging the search index and search pages with such LLM output. Why not make it clear policy that all AI content is worthless and will be removed from index?

[superclown2]

Why not make it clear policy that all AI content is worthless and will be removed from index?

That might well be happening eventually. Even the best AI text generators have identifiable footprints and I would think that Google will eventually bring out an update that wipes most of them out.

[Dalnoon]

I don't think that's the case, AI content is ranking better than ever.

[RedBar]

Why do people insist on calling this AI? It's just another con like Web 2.0 and the Cloud.

We've had Google's Scraper 1.0, let's be realistic and call this Scraper 2.0, quite simply G's intention is to try and absorb as much information as possible and then relegate any independent info / facts / opinion / etc to pages 3/4/5 IF anyone is still bothering to generate it.

[Atomic]

The full AI 'answer engine' is coming

It will be interesting to see if this is what end users want. I don't. I will be using other, more traditional search tools once this rolls out. And if all of the current search engines go this route, it's time for a new one to be built.