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]

[DeMalip]

I am down 50%, 20% on Monday and 30% yesterday. Its crazy out here.

[BlueEyes82]

Hello from Germany,

Our website also had its biggest crash in years (-50%). Initial analyzes have shown that all of our direct specialist competitors also lost in this way. But who won then? It seems as if only large authoritarian sites have been able to win everywhere, but here no "specialist sites" with real expertise have been able to win. An example is large newspapers with subdomains on the topic of streaming.

From our point of view, it doesn't seem to have been a "helpful content" but rather an "authoritarian content" update. The benefit for visitors is extremely questionable.

[Micha]

@BlueEyes -45 percent yesterday and today, my direct competitors are in the same situation, but Amazon has gained strongly and unfortunately it is again noticeable that in my area mainly the big news sites are gaining, for example "Tagesschau" has gained significantly. But you can't really tell at the moment who the winners and losers are, the next few days will show that when Google is done (apart from the small sites that have been constantly losing lately).

From our point of view, it seems that this was not a "helpful content" update, but rather an "authoritative content" update. The benefit to visitors is highly questionable.

I can only agree with that by the way

[RedBar]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld both DeMalip and BlueEyes82

As a matter of interest in which general sector(s) are you?

Ecommerce, local / national / international
Informational, evergreen / news
Specialist evergreen trade

I'm trying to get a grip on who has been hit and who has benefitted the most.

[BlueEyes82]

Hey RedBar+

in German affiliate marketing with comparisons (cellphones, streaming, pay-tv). I have now checked around 20 competitors, all the “small” ones lost, only the really big ones (with many different topics - no specialized sites) saw growth. I use Sistrix for the check, my competitors and I are at 1-4 points, the "big ones" at 40+x. - Here there were usually 1-5% increases, which fits the ratio compared to the "small ones".

[ichthyous]

Sorry to hear these stories...my site took a big dip over the weekend and now has bounced back but perhaps not quite as strong as early September. Every local is up today, including USA...a rarity. Only Australia (-66%) and Canada (-41%) are down. Those are still unusually large drops but both of those countries tend to swing a lot.

[christianz]

How are product comparison pages "unhelpful content", especially specialized and with uniquely large set of data? Does that mean Google's own product aggregations, flight comparison pages etc. are "unhelpful content" too?

[penitentman]

In the traffic is down camp... After surviving the Aug Core unscathed I was a happy man. Until yesterday. The HCU pounded 8 of my 12 informational websites. Still analyzing and waiting for data to come in but I'm probably looking at a 35% drop in traffic. What's curious is that I usually feel affects right away on the first day of the update. This time it took 4 days. So now I'm worried that my 4 remaining website will get dinged before this thing is over... Briefly looking at ranking changes Google has simply rewarded existing competitor websites with more pages being ranked along with some fb and irrelevant websites. Doesn't seem more helpful to me.

[Shepherd]

I wonder if he thinks he's being cute OR if they are really that tone deaf at google...

@JohnMu x(Twitter) handle: "Page indexing issues detected in johnmu.com"

[puckparches]

Last year, around this time, our traffic and revenue both declined by approximately 25%. Although our traffic has since recovered this year, our revenue has not. Unfortunately, in the past couple of weeks, both our traffic and revenue have decreased by another 25%, resulting in a nearly 50% decrease in revenue. It's incredibly frustrating because no matter how many hours you invest in adding more content, if Google makes even a single change, all your hard work can go to waste.

[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.