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]

[RedBar]

it's time for a new one to be built.

I'm a multi-year user of DDG and whilst nothing for search will ever be perfect for everyone I'd say it's a good 80% for me on desktop plus the only one I use on mobile, however since DDG takes some of its feed from Bing how may this change?

Crazy question possibly? Does Joe User realise how bad G is or is it simply us techie geeks?

[christianz]

The full AI 'answer engine' is coming

Once Google puts generative as default SE, we will finally be free from worrying about Google. They will vacate their dominant position in web search to whoever still has web search as the default.

[Micha]

Once Google puts generative as default SE, we will finally be free from worrying about Google. They will vacate their dominant position in web search to whoever still has web search as the default.

I don't think Google will change everything so quickly. The past has shown that G promises a lot, and in the end, it's a complete washout. On top of that, the AI hype is now dying down, at least as far as web search is concerned, and there are some legal concerns: copyright, error rate, etc.

In addition, you can see it in Bing, which is often celebrated, but Microsoft has not gained any relevant market share.

[Conro]

@Mica Compared to how Google's SERP is right now, the user would be much better off getting direct answers from Bard rather than reading through Reddit scrolls. In comparison, the AI would also be more credible with its tone.

[ichthyous]

...On top of that, the AI hype is now dying down, at least as far as web search is concerned, and there are some legal concerns: copyright, error rate, etc. In addition, you can see it in Bing, which is often celebrated, but Microsoft has not gained any relevant market share.

That's right. ChatGPT use has dropped like a stone and Google's market share is actually higher. There are huge copyright issues involved with generative AI. Images created with AI have zero copyright protection as the images have no human creator. But the actual creators providing the source images for the dataset do have rights, and they are being infringed by this new technology...the lawsuits are already flying. The AI/tech industry will not win on that front.

[christianz]

reading through Reddit scrolls

Reddit is so large it should not be featured in web search at all. Likewise twitter, facebook, Amazon etc. Users should go, and do go, to those sites directly and search via their native search tools.

Removing big tech sites from search is just one of the low hanging fruit that would bring big boost in search quality with little effort. It is also one of those fruit that will never be picked, for obvious reasons.

Having said that, I would still prefer seeing reddit thread than some random made-for-seo, made-for-affiliate crap site. Problem is - Google with this "update" is demoting all non-big-tech sites, regardless of actual content helpfulness and authenticity.

It all comes back to EAT and their perverted, idiotic idea of what website authority is. Website authority has nothing to do with author credibility or credibility of person or organization that is running the site. And Googlers are either too dumb or too corrupt to understand this. Maybe they are all just too young and never experienced real Internet with real organic website authority.

I am just happy to see that this shambolic EAT thing is finally coming around to bite them (Google) in the backside, via the proliferation of so called "parasite content" or "authority spam".

[ichthyous]

Big drop in USA, UK, and CA traffic today, -35%, -25%, -75% respectively at 2pm. Yesterday UK ended the day at -39% and AU was -50%, USA was flat, CA was up 120%. So big swings and this is while my number of top 5 ranking terms keeps climbing all summer and through September.

[Conro]

People have forgotten that Google had demoted forums years ago because they were filled with spam and impractical content. Now, however, they have resurfaced them, portraying them as an authoritative source. Talking about EAT doesn't make sense with Google; let's remember that it is working to promote an artificial intelligence with completely unreliable answers

[RedBar]

@ichthyous

Saturday global site 61.5%. I get concerned when it's sub 60% on weekends
Saturday hotel venue 198%

So far today global site 53.5%
So far today hotel 196%

The crazy inconsistency continues.

[christianz]

[twitter.com...]

Isn't it ironic that "Helpful Content Update" is mostly demoting "Tools"? They may be ad-stuffed or spammy but I wouldn't call them "unhelpful".

What are they showing instead? Reddit thread on how to do unit conversion yourself with piece of paper and calculator?

Are they demoting Google's own tool widgets too?

Bizarre...

I don't have tools websites, by the way. I am just curious.

[Razorllama]

Mr. Mu saying there won't be any rollbacks/changes to how the update has played out so far.

Enjoy your daily dose of outdated UGC on top of the SERPs, I guess.

What a funny take on 'helpful' updates, for real.

[Conro]

Now I see the "SEO professionals" agreeing with Google, always talking about the same nonsense of unique and quality content. The ones that make me laugh the most are those who talk about branding and being a reference point, as if any website had never thought of it. Do you want advice? Apart from a very small number of serious SEOs who are probably already working for big companies, don't let these agencies looking for unsuspecting victims deceive you.

[BlueEyes82]

I am currently laughing - Mr. Mu.. The update is not done to harm anyone, but to highlight FANTASTIC, helpful, unique, attractive content in search. A unique self-incense. But you're used to that, it reads between the lines as if Google knew that the update didn't go well, but doesn't want to admit any mistakes.

You will probably counteract this internally with lots of small updates so that you don't lose face.

[Conro]

Yes Perfect work. 9 position of Microsoft in 1 page ahahah [google.com...]

[Micha]

Mr. Mu saying there won't be any rollbacks/changes to how the update has played out so far.

Well, Mr. Mu is known to talk a lot when the day is long. But an update being withdrawn is rare anyway, so what he says is nothing new.

[haramamba]

Yes Perfect work. 9 position of Microsoft in 1 page

Yesterday I saw 8 links to books.google.com in a row in one search. The links were irrelevant, and I did not search for books.

[christianz]

Yes Perfect work. 9 position of Microsoft in 1 page ahahah

Low quality and irrelevant content hosted on big tech domain turns high quality and always relevant.

Welcome to the post-organic-web world of EAT-based ranking.

[Conro]

17 positions 1-2 pages + 4 Images for Samsung . Best update ever :D <snip>

7 positions in 1 page for WhatsApp
<snip>

Yea is all ok... Eheh

[edited by: not2easy at 1:08 pm (utc) on Sep 25, 2023]
[edit reason] Please see Charter [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[christianz]

17 positions + 4 Images for Samsung . Best update ever :D

Where is Reddit and YouTube... how dare they leave them out...

[BlueEyes82]

@christianz

That is correct. In Germany we have a very big problem with newspapers and large magazines that rent out their domains outside of their subject area or write articles for all sorts of things - without any real specialist knowledge. These are actually all areas (finance, energy, telecommunications, streaming, etc.)

If Google were to rate this correctly, it would be the biggest real quality update in recent years. And that would certainly be easier to implement if there was a “will” than anything else - but Google is probably consciously shying away.

[christianz]

@BlueEyes82

I agree 100%. But to play the devil's advocate:

1. If I was running Google I would genuinely not know what to do and how to fix this. 15 years ago it was easy - you rank based on page rank. Web users were linking in forums and websites organically. Sites with most backlinks were the ones with highest REAL AUTHORITY (not the fake off-site EAT authority that Google is pushing now). Today hardly anyone is linking organically and most organic places for links (forums, small websites etc) are half dead or dead. Links are viewed as some kind of dangerous endorsements, there are special "sponsored", "ugc" modifiers to make these "dangerous" links less scary and, in general, 99.999% of links are spam, PBN, or links between big tech social media pages. Deriving any kind of authority from links that appeared after ~2015 is impossible - they are almost exclusively sponsored content / bought or generated spam links.

2. Germany has most draconian anti free speech laws probably in entire world. Google may be turning the EAT dial even more for German web, because they don't want to risk something "naughty" to surface in the top positions that may result in government fines etc.

As a result the status quo is terrible and everyone knows its terrible and sees this - even Google admits it with their warnings about hosting "third party content". But I don't know if there is any silver bullet fix. With gen AI it will only get worse as these EAT sites take advantage of free money and generate infinite amount of worthless articles about every subject under the sun.

[MrSnuts]

@christianz:
"Germany has most draconian anti free speech laws probably in entire world."

this is not only off-topic, but you are also plain wrong saying that. "entire world"? Ever went to Russia or China or ....
I happen to hold a german passport & have to object here, no offense intended.

[Dalnoon]

Hello guys, I was also hit by HCU but managed to find a correlation between hit websites and the ones that did well. I need some help verifying it.

To me, it seems this was a brand-driven update, meaning, if your website/brand isn't being actively searched by users, you get punished. Which is exactly why the likes of Reddit and Quora are skyrocketing, cuz people search their names a lot.

Can you all help answering these questions:
1/ Were you hit by HCU?
2/ Based on SEMrush Ahrefs or any other tool that you use, does your website name get searched at all? (anything more than 100 per month)
e.g you have a website called gooddogs.com, check for search volume for "Labradoodle gooddogs", "gooddogs.com labradoodle", or just simply search "gooddogs"
3/ Check the branded traffic for websites that replaced your rankings, is it higher than you?

[Conro]

I'm noticing now that in ALL the searches I'm doing, 'people also ask' is right before or after the site in position 1. If this allows Google to gain more visibility for its advertising, the ranked sites will see a significant decrease in visits. Google is a traitor

[Dalnoon]

^ To answer for my own sites:
1/ All were hit by HCU except for two - the ones that were hit, each dropped around 40%, the other 2 were stable
2/ The ones that were not hit, had a brand search volume of around 50
3/ I lost most of my rankings to bigger companies which are considered "big media" and in some cases I was replaced by Quora

[christianz]

this is not only off-topic, but you are also plain wrong saying that

Please keep it about September update, EAT, authority spam, HCU etc. Don't try to bait me into political topics. The heavy handed German censorship is relevant here, but I don't want to delve into discussions comparing censorship in Germany vs China vs Russia. They are all very similar.

[Conro]

@Dalnoon the site with forum community have received traffic or site of famous brand

[Dalnoon]

Any site, can be forum/community/e-commerce/media/brand, as long as their name gets searched it's called "branded traffic" and it matters (I think)

[christianz]

@Dalnoon

1. Yes.
2. Yes. My site name is one of my main keywords and gets appended like "reddit" (branded searches). But its obviously small site and nothing like big brands or platforms.
3. I haven't even looked what is replacing me but I would assume some of them are very big but far less relevant or functional sites with plenty of branded searches also.

[Dalnoon]

@christianz
When they search for your brand name, are they looking to find your website or are they just searching the brand-name because it is a generic word? like an EMD.

[christianz]

@Dalnoon

It's not a generic word. Its concatenation of words that doesn't make too much sense on its own. I can't say I am seeing tons of keywords like that but I do see them and I also have much higher direct traffic that a random useless MFA site would get. It's very old site in narrow niche and my (not too big) audience does use google to search within it (by adding its name like reddit).

I can't say this invalidates your thesis, because I haven't researched what sites are replacing my keywords. They could very well have much more branded searches, some of them definitely do.

[Micha]

The heavy handed German censorship is relevant here

There is no strict censorship in Germany, on the contrary. There are rules here regarding data and privacy that seem strict when viewed from the US, but they protect people (and since I run a news site in Germany, I know the laws quite well). To suggest similarities with China, by the way, is complete nonsense.

But the topic is very complex and does not need to be discussed further here.

Regarding Google: of course the company tries to adapt to countries, in China also differently than in Germany or the USA, but that doesn't change the way websites are weighted. In Germany, too, it currently looks like what most people here report. Search results are barely usable, lots of old articles, etc. (although I've seen rather little from Reddit so far).

[Dalnoon]

@christianz, ok, thanks for your input

[renatovieira]

Huge drop today... Here We Go Again :-D

[ichthyous]

The heavy handed German censorship is relevant here, but I don't want to delve into discussions comparing censorship in Germany vs China vs Russia. They are all very similar.

Let us apply a bit of historical accuracy here. Germany has laws regarding right-wing hate speech against minority groups, as the right-wing led the country to dictatorship and destruction not so long ago. Russia and China have laws punishing speech that the regime deems to be even minimally critical or threatening...a vast difference. Germany is one of the most open and truly democratic societies on earth, Russia and China are authoritarian regimes run by dictators.

Google and other tech platforms have the right to police threatening speech and misinformation on their services as that directly alienates users and advertisers. Look what has happened to Twitter after all controls were removed and the right-wing hate speech and fake news proliferated, it has turned into a trash can and has lost 90%+ of its value

[BlueEyes82]

Germany is the most meticulous about data protection law in the entire EU. It's not uncommon to overshoot the mark. Unfortunately, when it comes to laws, people often don't think about the consequences or reactions of websites. Now always sites offer:

A: Accept all cookies and advertising
B: A subscription for advertising and cookie-free reading

Otherwise you will no longer be able to use the site at all.
Large closed networks like Facebook and YouTube, which reach 80% of daily users, are never really affected by this anyway.

Personally, I think data protection is good, but in Germany it has lost all measure and benefit.

[mosxu]

Twitter has not lost 90% of its value more like lost 90% of bots!

Elon should stop other platforms from using bots as unfair competition!

[ichthyous]

A: Accept all cookies and advertising
B: A subscription for advertising and cookie-free reading

Otherwise you will no longer be able to use the site at all.

I have never seen this anywhere. Every site I visit offers the ability to opt out of specific cookies and data collection and customize your options. I usually reject all and still continue using the site. It is an annoyance to have to do it each time, but you can't have it both ways.

[Conro]

@ichthyous accept all cookie or pay a subscription for don't view ads is possible for the gdpr why the site offer the alternative for view the site. 1 accept all cookie 2 pay

[EditorialGuy]

To me, it seems this was a brand-driven update, meaning, if your website/brand isn't being actively searched by users, you get punished.

Our informational travel site has done well in the HCU (so far, anyway), and we're a mom-and-pop operation.

[RedBar]

@Conro

I'm confused by what you are saying. I have several large German customers and have many German visitors every day. They all access my sites without any issue, they do not have to accept cookies, they do not have to pay.

Are you referring to some other specific German site(s)?

[Conro]

@RedBar no. In Italy the principal big site of news use this system, for example you can see the site corriere. it

[RedBar]

@Conro ... That's completely normal for many sites accepting cookies, am I missing something?

[ichthyous]

Big drops today for USA (-26%), Canada (-61%), Australia (-67%) and Germany (-40%) at 2pm. Clearly the strong traffic pattern of early Sept. is over as all of the anglophone countries are perpetually lagging now. German traffic was unusually high earlier this month and is now reverting.

[RedBar]

@ichthyous

Crazy spikey day again after a 63.5% day Sunday, so far today 271.5%, these page view spreads are npt "normal" for me.

[renatovieira]

I also see traffic spikes, then cliffs. Today the SERP's are crazy... AdSense on the floor, I smell G's movements.

[l1fejosh]

+34% increase in USA traffic.
-27% decrease in Canadian traffic

We are based in Canada and we're seeing an increase in USA traffic and decrease in Canadian traffic.

We also just got #0 featured snippet for USA traffic as well...

I'm not mad at growing in the USA, it was one of our goals - but we are destabilizing in our own country.

[Fluff_Nutz]

Traffic has been more or less stable today. With a rather nice spike at both 5pm and 8pm UK time. Most of my traffic is from the USA.

[ins3rt]

This is my reality right know: [i.ibb.co...]

30% drop.

Spanish website.

[RubicCubed]

30% drop.

We experienced a much harder fall then this just from all the ads Google put in the serps months ago. Combine this with the horrific HCU, and it's a complete disaster in Google. The only thing saving us is the increased sales from other search engines.