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]

[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 ]

[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

[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.