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]

[ins3rt]

Do you guys think there will be a "rollback"?

[pavf6]

People writing good quality content have lost their enthusiasm after looking AI generated spam sites copying and ranking higher day by day.

[Martin Ice Web]

Traffic is way up but it is not converting anymore. Seeing some of our informational sites getting more traffic. This we put a lot of work in. Old sites with new fresh content need a long waiting time to see some positiv results (>6 month) while new trash/back hat websites get instant push to the top for 3 to 4 weeks. When they then get burned by google they move to new domains and get the push again.
IMO it is bad to punish established sites (more than 10 years) and reward new sites.

[RareBit]

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

I think the fact we have seen a rise in users searching for [term + reddit] says it all. I have had to do it myself when looking for information as G has either picked the wrong intent and shown sales sites when I am looking for specific information or just shown page after page of generic 'top 10 but never seen or owned the product' sites..

[RedBar]

For my global site Monday ended with my second highest day of the year at 284.5% however traffic came to an abrupt halt at UK 20.00. After 11 hours today it's at 30.5% with PVs to uniques reverting to almost 1:1, Monday was 1:6.1

Utter inconsistency seems to be G's delivery at the moment.

[Nutterum]

OK, guys,

As some of you know me already , I always take my time analyzing the impact for a week or two before I make any conclusions on GOOGLE UPDATES.

This time however I was prepared with a few content tests that started running in mid July. I had 15 Category pages with variety content - total of 1.5k words below the products that offered helpful tips, combinations, trends. Due to the nature of products (apparel) the combinations were paragraphs dedicated to other categories and how to combine different apparel items.

OK, so the second group has categories that still have the same amount of text but the content was created to provide as much info for that specific category (say everything about jeans in a practical way) and had only 1 interlink leading to another category and had a larger FAQ section.

So after the latest update hit, my variety content categories tanked BAD. As in from average 7.6 spot to 54. THey died.

The focused content categories improved quite a bit and gathered ~40% more longtail keywords going from 7.8 in SERP to 5.4 .

All in all Google prefers as close to the title and H1 focused content as possible. Total clicks were 14000 and impressions measured were around 1.6 million so the data is statistically sufficient.

[Martin Ice Web]

@nutterum,, that would 100% match my experience with serps in our niche, only that very low content sites rule where Title=h1=content.
Whenever a site has "helpful content" aside the title and h1 it tanked.

[christianz]

I think web users will soon have to "subscribe" to specific websites that they know are real and useful. Via RRS or Favorites or otherwise. Because Google is losing battle against huge wave of AI generated spam. I can't blame them for that because I wouldn't know what to do either, apart from creating a small search engine with human curated websites only (directory based).

Right now Google is in panic mode. They only show their own sites (YouTube), followed by short whitelist of big media and big tech sites, and what follows after that are forums (I actually really like the idea that niche forums are getting some traffic, they are awesome!) and after certain point its like a sharp boundary after which its 100% generated spam. Often hosted on random letter subdomains on hacked "authority" sites. It is quite comical to do long tail searches with Google and scrolling down to position 20+. If you search for how to change the air filter on some specific car you get a very lengthy technical article (AI gnerated) with lots of ads that is hosted on "asdfjfhnv" subdomain on some long forgotten (and hacked) NGO website or "qwogdhh" subdomain on some lawyers personal site.

Bing/DDG is exactly the same. They seem to love those gen AI "articles" even more.

If you are the poor innocent soul that wrote the actual article or collectively the poor and innocent webmaster souls that created a corpus of articles like that from which LLMs are now trained, you will NEVER EVER get any visibility. You will be valued exactly the same as 1000 AI spun copies of your work.

Today there is zero correlation with content quality, originality and ranking and publishing quality content on web is just about the dumbest and least fruitful idea anyone could have.

I think at this stage it is only worthwhile creating generative SEO content, but in order to get the same amount of traffic that you used to get you have to spin a lot more. Running faster to stay in place kind of thing.

I have never made SEO content because it is depressing, but it might be the last thing worth trying as far as publishing on post-AI web goes.

[superclown2]

I cannot remember seeing such poor search results in any search engine in the last 20+ years as I saw this morning. Even a certain popular review site was riding high for a service that it neither creates nor promotes, with none of the search terms anywhere to be seen. It was as though the results had been picked pretty well at random.

Young Google was great; in between it's not been bad; but now it seems to be approaching senility.

Meanwhile DDG is giving me bang up to date search results for even the most obscure terms I an entering. Perhaps MS should drop Bing and put in a bid to buy them.

[christianz]

Meanwhile DDG is giving me bang up to date search results for even the most obscure terms I an entering

In my experience, for obscure (long tail) terms they are loaded full with AI spam, unfortunately. But still they are better because I don't have to scroll 1000 pixels of YouTube every time.

[superclown2]

Because Google is losing battle against huge wave of AI generated spam.

Years ago it was the same with spun articles. Google learned how to recognise them and they died away.

Give them their due; these guys with their knowledge of statistical analysis are superb at creating algorithms to detect just about anything so I wouldn't be surprised to see an 'AI Content' update causing howls of anguish in the foreseeable future. After all, if we can recognise it they will be able to.

[Conro]

@christianz Just today, I was thinking about the return of both vertical and non-vertical directories, with quality websites selected by humans rather than bots. Once selected sites, the directory's search engine would find things based on their content. It would be a step forward in having high-quality, themed websites and not ai

[shamohan22]

Hi, my website traffic has dropped by 50% after 4 years of consistently climbing. Adsense earnings have dropped by 50%, too.

Did some research and found that it's due to a Google core algorithm update.

Is anybody else facing the same problem? Is this temporary? Anybody who has faced this problem, please share your experience.

Thanks.

[edited by: not2easy at 12:34 pm (utc) on Sep 26, 2023]
[edit reason] splice cleanup [/edit]

[superclown2]

In my experience, for obscure (long tail) terms they are loaded full with AI spam, unfortunately.

I think that depends a lot on the vertical your search terms point towards; some of them are certainly very heavily spammed, but then again they always have been, one way or another. My searches are usually for quite technical queries so my experience is perhaps different from yours; DDG give me pretty much the answers I'm looking for, whilst Google ignores a major part of the search term and serves up plain vanilla results from 'high authority' sites that are completely useless for my purposes.

Of course DDG are not perfect and like every other search engine they are fighting a constant battle against some very clever spammers but at least they try to produce the best answers for the searcher, rather than the ones that produce the most profit for them.

Just today, I was thinking about the return of both vertical and non-vertical directories, with quality websites selected by humans rather than bots.

Yes we used to have DMOZ the Open Directory but it was open to abuse by some (not all) editors. It suffered under the weight of the sheer number of new websites being produced, and the number of editors needed to sort them, though, and AOL, who were finally in charge of it, decided it wasn't worth their while carrying it on. Even Google relied on it a lot in the early days when they were still a serious search engine, and I still quite miss it!

[edited by: superclown2 at 12:50 pm (utc) on Sep 26, 2023]

[christianz]

@christianz Just today, I was thinking about the return of both vertical and non-vertical directories, with quality websites selected by humans rather than bots. Once selected sites, the directory's search engine would find things based on their content. It would be a step forward in having high-quality, themed websites and not ai

I am so frustrated with Google and their abandonment of web platform that I actually have contemplated building such a thing myself. I know I could do it, even down to having my own infrastructure a la Neeva (its amazing what cheap commodity hardware can do!), but I just cannot spend year(s) working on something without any guarantee of getting paid. The revenue stream would most likely have to be from tangential services not so much the search itself. (there isn't even a good lightweight non-Google analytics alternative.....).

VCs with fat wallets feel free to PM me :D :D :D

In all seriousness, there is a wealth of web applications / services / pages that are increasingly being hidden by gatekeepers like Google. Imagine what they would become if they actually were shown some love with a website-centric search engine...

[renatovieira]

@shamohan22 - Search for previous messages. Many editors have this problem, including me. My site is 10 years old and was affected by this update.

You are not alone. What can you do? Just wait...

[BigKat]

Do you guys think there will be a "rollback"?

Doubtful. This update, like those before it, IMO are designed to promote Google's profits over quality. This is why traffic from other search engines converts exponentially better then free or paid traffic from Google.

In discussing this HCU with others in my industry, I see the domino effect starting - layoffs in the near future, reduction/elimination of ad budgets in Google, wholesale and retail price increases, etc. to offset the damage Google inflicted.

[ichthyous]

@BigKat Google definitely did roll back the update from late August, so it does sometimes undo or lessen the effect of a previous update...but only when the update isn't stuffing more money into its pockets. It was clear that traffic was far heavier and conversions were suddenly strong again from ~ Aug 26th onward. With this 2nd Sept update all of that immediately shifted back to poor conversions and the exact same pattern of suppressed USA traffic. I would say that it wasn't a full rollback, but a partial. Google simply sits back and collects the data and uses us all like guinea pigs. The collateral damage to people's business and livelihoods hasn't been a consideration for more than a decade, if it ever was.

[Nosuchthing]

@Dalnoon

We've been hit as well, although not as massively as others.

From where I am standing, I think that your theory holds weight.

We do have brand searches (about 200 a month), but those who have outranked us since the update have much larger numbers (3.5K+).

Not to mention that we are also experiencing the same thing described a few pages back where one authority site ranks up to 8 times on the first page (https://www.google.com/search?q=parking+aeroport+marseille for example). I can't imagine this to be intentional though. It cannot be good for UX, and Google cannot stop raving about how it's the most important thing for them. If they could at least address this issue, It would be nice.

[puckparches]

I doubt Google will rollback the update, but hopefully, as with other updates, the algorithm starts by showing SEO-optimized pages but eventually will begin displaying the pages with better content.

[Atomic]

This is the results of the fantastic update

Hardly. Google has been sued by the US Justice department for ant-trust violations. And it looks bad. The press has some really good meat to chew on. But it's got nothing to do with this update.

[BigKat]

@ichthyous
I would expect Google to do some tweaking around the edges, and possibly some manual demotions to calm the anger in the community, but I see Google largely staying the course. I hope I'm wrong, but I'm sure Google fully tested the HCU in the SERPS to see if it aligned with their goals prior to releasing it.

@Conro
Expand the graph out to a year to see the valuation having increased 30%+ as of today.

[Conro]

@BigKat You have to look at the decline that started from September 20th, don't make comparisons from whichever date you prefer. Anyway, they deleted the post, maybe it bothered someone :D (Google)

[EditorialGuy]

I think web users will soon have to "subscribe" to specific websites that they know are real and useful. Via RRS or Favorites or otherwise. Because Google is losing battle against huge wave of AI generated spam.

The subscription or sign-up model works only for sites that a user visits regularly: e.g., major news and entertainment sites or sites about the user's hobbies or special interest. If the user needs information about a topic that he doesn't follow regularly (say, how to fix a broken widget or planning a trip to Widgetville), he or she needs to get that information on the broader World Wide Web. That's where search engines come in.

It's possible that Google will simply have to become more draconian in its filtering. I'd be perfectly happy if, for example, Google simply ignored all sites with an over-the-top ad-to-content ratio, all "review" sites with barely populated template-based pages, and content mills with too many shallow pages on too many topics. Eric Schmidt once said (if I recall correctly) that 90 percent of the Web was crap. The crap figure is probably closer to 99 percent today.

Side note: AI is getting a lot of hate these days, but over time, AI tools should make it easier for Google and other search engines to identify content mills, sites with spun content, etc. "Fighting AI with AI" may be the new "fighting fire with fire."

[Micha]

Slowly it's getting a bit annoying, first the traffic from Google increased now it's dropping again. They don't know what they want. Since about 16 o'clock the traffic of Google is practically dead. The last few days the traffic was not so good, but at least it was there.

Side note: AI is getting a lot of hate these days, but over time, AI tools should make it easier for Google and other search engines to identify content mills, sites with spun content, etc. "Fighting AI with AI" may be the new "fighting fire with fire."

I am someone who is very critical of AI, especially not in editorial. So maybe I'm looking at it too negatively, but don't you think that with the error rate AI currently has and will have for a long time, way too much "honest content" will be penalized in such a case?

[BigKat]

@ Conro

Your post was likely removed because it was a better fit in the sub-forum "Search Engine Govt, Policy, and Business Issues" at: [webmasterworld.com...]

I'd be perfectly happy if, for example, Google simply ignored all sites with an over-the-top ad-to-content ratio

I'd also be happy if Google took care of their own over the top ad to organic ratio. Being buried under ads does have its benefits. Benefits for Google that is...

[christianz]

The subscription or sign-up model works only for sites that a user visits regularly

Sure. What I meant with "subscribe" was to add site to your "watch list". Like RSS feeds used to be or YouTube subscriptions are. Not as a paid membership / paywall. Although that works for some sites too with constantly updated high value content (news sites etc).

Instead of Discover feed with random sites there should have been a feed of your "subscribed" sites.

[Fluff_Nutz]

Sad. I just told my writers to accept a cut down on articles or to leave. Do you, truly, think that these updates will ever end? I cannot keep paying these writers with these updates damaging the revenue. Yet they are so consistent. No wonder I dislike Google. Really wish there was an alternative. I was +10% yesterday. Now the traffic has, once again, dropped. The growth is not consistent so I never know what revenue to expect. I certainly will not be meeting my personal target this month. Why didn't G just place both the August and September updates into one huge update? Who is to say October, November or even December won't have updates?

I might be back if there is light at the end of the tunnel but this is having an impact on my mental health. October 2022 was the first kick in the teeth. Unfortunately it did not end there.

[Conro]

I read about too many people experiencing mental health issues, feeling depressed, and losing sleep due to Google, which lately has been causing significant stress to those who rely on the internet and the search engine. I read about people who, after many years of work, no longer trust Google and are considering quitting everything to pursue a job unrelated to the internet. I believe that if something bad happened to me due to severe stress caused by Google, I would sue them to seek compensation for stress-related damages. Any judge would understand the situation by examining all the data and testimonies I have.

[Soulofmonk]

One of the updates released last year hit one site that used to scrap my competitor's articles. After the September update, it's back and outranking the original content. You can't even file DMCA against these spam sites because of how they spin the article.

[Sissi]

Never trusted Google from 2004 having seen how good people have been banned for no reason
Have kept Google as passive money and kept my career progessing
Do not forget behind Google are not always smart people but sometines HS dealing with AI

HS= Human Stupidity (copyright 2023)

[renatovieira]

It's early, I know, but I see a significant improvement this morning. Has anyone else noticed positive movement today?

[RedBar]

Nope, 13+ hours and at 30%, very, very slow.

[Conro]

@renatovieira yes a Little up movement

[Sodero18]

Huge traffic loss on Google in September but many of our site's posts / pages are still ranking near the top of Bing and Duck Duck Go for specific keywords. We're noticing more and more users are starting to move to other search engines. Some or our competitors are now ranking on the first page of Google with old pages that haven't been updated in years so we're back to the idea that pages that are updated are going down in rank. Since we have to update pages if there are errors, new images and new information, we will have to continue to update pages despite the fact that Google has decided to view that as fake fresh content. I can see why another poster has had to let some of their content writers go as a result of this flawed update.

[superclown2]

Some or our competitors are now ranking on the first page of Google with old pages that haven't been updated in years so we're back to the idea that pages that are updated are going down in rank.

This is quite possible. Going back 15 years or so we knew that if we made minor changes to a site it was going to tumble in the SERPs until Google had re-assessed it, and sometimes it took months before a full recovery. Major changes were OK though; nothing happened until the next update. I could never see the logic in it.

[Nosuchthing]

@Spdero18 & @superclown2, I have hundreds of pages we update every 1 to 4 weeks. Mainly price updates, and tweaks to the content depending on products availability. We're up in all countries we are in, so I am not sure this is an accurate presumption. We also update the date every single time something changes.

[Conro]

@Nosuchthing
If you have an e-commerce website, what do you need dates for? When you update a post of blog, it's like playing Russian roulette – sometimes it greatly improves your ranking, other times nothing changes, and sometimes it can even drop in rankings. That's why I usually only update articles that are more than 3 years old and have fallen in the serp

[superclown2]

I am not sure this is an accurate presumption.

Google has a habit of changing the rules often and, seemingly, erratically. It was certainly accurate some time ago; it paralysed many of us for a long while. Whether or not it is accurate now, or will be in the future, no-one knows except G and I doubt if they will tell (and I wouldn't necessarily believe them if they did).

They have said that they will penalise date changing which they view (not necessarily correctly) as attempts to mimic freshness. Plus they certainly have a habit of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

[RedBar]

Weekend levels of traffic for my global site however I am currently at a huge widget trade fair in Italy celebrating its 60th year and bigger than ever! I have several meetings planned for the next few days, the www discussion should be very interesting.

[Nosuchthing]

@Conro
I guess it really depends on what you mean with "ecommerce website". It's not a shopify or anything like that, but it does qualify as ecommerce.

We have pages that cater to people who are specifically looking for pricing info for example. They are distinctive from our main landing pages with a more transactional intent. We update them regularly, and if we did not, they would be irrelevant for this very reason. So far so good on my side, and we changed nothing to our habits.

I manage other websites with non ecommerce pages that we update for various other reasons. For example, when outgoing links are no longer up to date (404, 301 etc) or when whatever we are talking about has changed in one way or the other. These are not dated though (aside from meta title), but I do see an uptake every single time I do it. Maybe every few months, like twice or three times a year, and as recently as last week.

[BigKat]

We're noticing more and more users are starting to move to other search engines.

Glad others are starting to see this too. With Google's SERPS being nothing but ads, and a whole lot of spam, I'm hopeful this trend will continue. It gives me hope that we can still be found online even though Google has buried us.

[Atomic]

We're noticing more and more users are starting to move to other search engines.

Wow! Amazing. There must be some data to support that.

[Helix Online]

Yes, this update has also negatively affected my mental health. Extreme anxiety, stress, and depression. I'm autistic and I can't work in a normal "day job" so I can't just "go get a job" instead of my online business. I've lost around 35% of traffic. Yesterday's stats showed almost -50%.

Since Google seems to love AI sites now, I actually started a new crappy AI site this week. I would rather have just focused on my main site, but this update makes it clear I can't just rely on one website for my income. Although having multiple websites may not solve the problem, at least I won't have all my eggs in one basket, so to speak.

[RedBar]

Wow! Amazing. There must be some data to support that.

Would Statcounter data do ?

[gs.statcounter.com...]

gs.statcounter.com Statcounter Global Stats - Browser, OS, Search Engine including Mobile Usage Share Tracks the Usage Share of Search Engines, Browsers and Operating Systems including Mobile from over 5 billion monthly page views.

[christianz]

Would Statcounter data do ?

Still within the channel where it has been slowly oscillating for years. If it fell below 90% and stood below 90, that would start to be interesting.

[Atomic]

Would Statcounter data do ?

Hardly. I don't think those stats show what you think they do.

[ichthyous]

Oh here we go again...ranking is higher and more top 3 ranking terms than ever, but traffic for some of my main landing pages is down 53%-76% today. Here is what I have found is the culprit:

1 - If terms drop in rank and keep their big beautiful image carousel under the listing they retain a good amount of the traffic
2 - If a term loses the image carousel it will lose most of its traffic, even if it rises in ranking.

So the particular rank does affect the amount of traffic received, but not as much as how well the listing stands out from the page. I can tell exactly when I lose the images on my links these days as the drops are enormous. How and why Google decides to add and drop, add and drop is a mystery...

Does anyone have any insight here?

[RubicCubed]

Still within the channel where it has been slowly oscillating for years.

I think the desktop segment is the best indicator for me since that's where we get big orders from. Sales from Google fell off a cliff and other search engines are sending us more orders then they ever have. This I think is because shopping searches on Google returns results like an Amazon reprint of just ads. Shoppers who want to find something different then on Amazon have to use a different search engine.

The graph below currently shows the percentage of Google desktop searches at their lowest point (83.49%) and Bing at its highest point (9.19%) in 8 years.

[statista.com...]

www.statista.com Global search engine desktop market share 2023 Statista While various platforms have divvied up the overall search market, Google has the biggest market share of them all.

[christianz]

The graph below currently shows the percentage of Google desktop searches at their lowest point (83.49%) and Bing at its highest point (9.19%) in 8 years.

The rabbid push of Reddit and Ticktock may be a sign of slight desperation in light of (maybe) somewhat falling market share. They want to be hip & cool :D

Yet how can they do that when they also have this mission to push "authoritative sources"... In YouTube if you want to see some first hand experience of some news event, you can't. You only get legacy media channels reporting on the event in a typical cable news sterile kind of way.

If you do the same on Ticktock I am sure you get bunch of actual first hand experiences from regular organic users.

Google wants to be "young again" and relevant to younger audiences. But at the same time they want to prioritize dead boring content from big media cartel.