October 2023 Google Search Observations

[Cyril TechWebsites]

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System: The following 3 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/5093320.htm [webmasterworld.com] by not2easy - 11:10 am on Oct 1, 2023 (atl -4)

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Seeing further drastical drop on Saturday. I stopped producing new content and updating the old content. There is no sense anymore for me, feeling awful to say that, but my website was fully destroyed with the "helpful" update.

[Razorllama]

Anybody seeing continuous fluctuations even after the update?

Over the past 2 days several more articles have dropped out of the SERPs.

In the mean time, my category pages have started getting impressions in GSC - despite me actually no-indexing them through my plugin.

I'm also attracting some nonsensical, completely unrelated impressions on a few articles.

[Conro]

I am analyzing many well-crafted websites that provide answers to users' questions. Their traffic has dropped lower than what they had seven years ago. Obviously, the traffic has been taken away by Google, which directly answers questions with People Also Ask (PAA) features in top positions, using content from other sites but without directing traffic to them. I hope the court condemns Google and that it returns to being a search engine and stops being an aggregator of answers, exploiting the work of others. This is unfair, doesn't satisfy the user, lacks ethics, and only aims to make money from others' work.

[adman]

Obviously, the traffic has been taken away by Google, which directly answers questions with People Also Ask (PAA) features in top positions, using content from other sites but without directing traffic to them.

PAA should list sources for answers.

[Fluff_Nutz]

Having Google do the correct and logical method is never going to happen, unfortunately. But I do agree there needs to be more than a simple fine and a smacked wrist. Fines do nothing to improve anything. Otherwise G would have stopped ages ago. Instead fines can be seen as a bad way to do things as it will result in more updates and innocent website hits where both revenue and traffic is lost. But G aren't capable of covering their own responsibilities. They, instead, run from it. Its easier for them to steal content and never give credit.

Whilst I seriously dislike Google and the way they run things, I also blame the American government too. For letting their monopoly run for so long. I'm not American but I'm having doubts and worries about their law system being far too lenient. For a big country too, its embarrassing.

To think that traffic should, rightly, be better for all of us right now. To think and read that, at one point, it was easy to make upwards of $5k per month within a year. Now its near on impossible to maintain a stable site that gets any where near great traffic. Mostly because of corporate greed. It needs dealing with. The internet is a massive world, one that is forever growing. It should NEVER EVER be run and governed by one single entity.

Anyway, traffic is +15% at present but alas how long for is anyone's guess. This is another issue. Unless its competition, the search should be stable. Not wondering when the next big drop will arrive. These drops or, so called updates, are just to continue funding the rest of their monopoly along with fines and taxes. Nothing else. Meaning they are pointless and needs addressing by the lazy USA government. They let it run out of hand so more reason to fix it. Now!

We, as website publishers, deserve respect. Recognition AND STABILITY. I'm sick of this slave labour. Something tells me they fiddle with Youtube too. At first I was unsure but now I don't know. Whilst its more stable. What does not make sense is having over 5k subscribers and not even getting 10% traffic to equate for that. I even saw someone with 50k subscribers only get 30 views. WTF? Seems like a pointless metric.

[Conro]

@adman yes, but nothing clic if have the reply in google

[Conro]

@Fluff_Nutz They are stealing our content to provide answers with our work without bringing us traffic, and things will get worse with SGE when it provides answers directly. All online jobs are at risk: websites, hosting, domains, SEO, consulting, software - everything could be in jeopardy because of Google

[RedBar]

@Conro

The thing is these claims have been made for at least the last 13 years, 2010 was a significant information take-over by Google, yet there are more sites than ever competing whatever they are trying to compete for.

Many sites are local sites and judging by my local High Street in the UK, many are doing fine but how we can justify so many coffee shops is beyond me. In which sector(s) are the ones who are losing, and gaining, traffic? Are they trying to compete against established national or international brands, are they in an expanding or declining market, smartphones come to mind here?

All the questions that have been asked by marketing people for years, me since 1968, are still being asked but in different ways and I can assure you of one thing that 55 years of marketing has taught me, it will most certainly be different again in 2024, 2025, 2026 ... ad infinitum.

[RubicCubed]

They are stealing our content to provide answers with our work without bringing us traffic, and things will get worse with SGE when it provides answers directly. All online jobs are at risk: websites, hosting, domains, SEO, consulting, software

We and the content we produce are the easiest for AI to replace and Google is doing just that with these updates. We know this by the greatly reduced traffic/conversions many of us are experiencing plus what we see in Google's SERPS - more zero click searches and access to product searches largely limited to paid ads. So what happens in the future when Google has exhausted the revenue from cutting us all out of the equation? Does Google next decide to monetize on-page answers by presenting users with false/fake information to achieve a positive financial outcome?

[ichthyous]

Another massive drop in traffic to a wide range of category landing pages today...my home page is -48% at 2:30pm and many landing pages are down 25%-75%. Most of that is USA traffic, which is down 41%, UK is -10%. The landing pages that were down last week are now up, and new ones have been blitzed. This follows the 2022 pattern of always ensuring that some part of your site loses its traffic on a rotating basis. Overall search traffic is up 4% today, but it's all going to individual pages and not to my category pages. In my experience that is mostly useless spammy and non-converting traffic.

[edited by: ichthyous at 6:37 pm (utc) on Oct 22, 2023]

[adman]

Well, I can't share your experience in full.
Google Search has been fairly consistent last few years for my site, until now.
After a 45% drop, there was no big changes, except that I see traffic is up about 3-5% since Monday.
This weekend was 5% better than last.
Also, I saw that keywords are back for some top ranking pages, so still I am indecisive about Google's intentions or future moves.

[mosxu]

What we have learned after every update is that the algo gives with one hand and takes with two!

We are all mind controlled!

[Razorllama]

@Adman

>Also, I saw that keywords are back for some top ranking pages

By 'some' do you mean that other pages of yours are still lost in the SERPs? Or did you regain them all?

I've seen 3 of my pages return and am tracking the timeframe. There's been a ~12-3 day return-to-form (3rd Oct to 17th for one; 5th October to 18th for the other).

However, I still have pages that disappeared around the 2nd or 4th of October and haven't returned yet. 6 pages disappeared on the 9th/10th.

Some of them are getting occasional impressions (2-3) for semi-related queries; others get nonsensical impressions. In one especially weird case, I have Page 4 of the blog section of my site ranking for the keyword at SERP page 3, despite the post itself getting 0 impressions for 2 weeks now.

Traffic-wise, my site seems to have stabilized on the level of the previous weekend and the 7th/8th October weekend. +/-5% compared to these.

[adman]

By 'some' do you mean that other pages of yours are still lost in the SERPs? Or did you regain them all?

Yes, they are still lost, but I noticed in GSC some started to "impress" :), and even though they have low impressions, position is what it was before update.
Will see what will be.

[Conro]

I'm noticing that several abandoned websites, some of which have been inactive for over a year, are experiencing an increase in traffic and keywords. Can anyone confirm this?

[BigKat]

I'm currently observing strange Gbot activity where Google is appending a competitor's product detail page URL to our domain and attempting to crawl it. We are returning 404's for these pages, and this bizarre behavior with Gbot is occurring with a variety of competitor product detail page URL variations.

[Fluff_Nutz]

@Conro

I have a small and newer site that has been abandoned for almost 2 months now. Since September it has seen a +32% increase in traffic.

My main site, whilst it has not been abandoned for that long. A mere several days in fact, but it has also seen an increase in traffic. +22% Saturday over Saturday. Sunday looks like an even bigger increase. Just waiting for the UA4 to give me my final result. Which is often not until 4-5pm UK time. Its super slow.. But I'm assuming another 15-20% increase.

[renatovieira]

Here, I see a recovery after updates, and along with a small but significant increase.

[mhansen]

All online jobs are at risk: websites, hosting, domains, SEO, consulting, software - everything could be in jeopardy because of Google

The down-line effect from the last few Google updates is starting to show on other websites where they too rely on Google search traffic. My wife has her own fairly well-known wholesale/closeout business where she buys product in bulk loads from wholesale-only sources (they don't sell to Joe Public, only licensed wholesalers) and she then sells it direct to consumers via several popular online platforms where she has boutique-type storefronts. We were discussing traffic trends over the weekend and she mentioned that a lot of leading store owners running in these online platforms are saying their traffic and sales have plummeted over the last several months.

Using SEMR as the data source, it shows all of these type of sites are losing their traffic (clicks) from Google search results, while their exposure (impressions) continue to rise.

Etsy - 270m, Google traffic in Oct 2022, down to 125m in Oct 2023.
Poshmark - 10m, Google traffic in Oct 2022, down to 4m Oct 2023
eBay - 158m, Google traffic in Oct 2022, down to 60m Oct 2023
Asos - 46m, Google traffic in Oct 2022, down to 26m Oct 2023
Asos - 53m, Google traffic in Oct 2022, down to 27m Oct 2023

Google is simply scavenging the search results for it's own good. It is what it is... you only need to look at their annual earnings (sharp increases YOY) to see the exact opposite trend of all websites (sharp decreases YOY).

In other news - has anyone noticed that on mobile devices, after page 1 of the organic results it no longer scrolls endlessly with results? Right now, after about 10-15 results which include ads, you are presented with nothing but discover/YT videos, etc. If you're not in the top 10-15 search results on mobile, you're now invisible.

[adman]

In other news - has anyone noticed that on mobile devices, after page 1 of the organic results it no longer scrolls endlessly with results? Right now, after about 10-15 results which include ads, you are presented with nothing but discover/YT videos, etc. If you're not in the top 10-15 search results on mobile, you're now invisible.

Yes, but it's a random occurrence, not always, or not for all searches.
It seems to me like Google is in some sort of chaos.
On other side, my traffic today continued positive trend from few days before.
Compared to last Monday, I expect traffic will be +8%.

[christianz]

you only need to look at their annual earnings (sharp increases YOY) to see the exact opposite trend of all websites (sharp decreases YOY).

Exactly. It's outrageous.

[Razorllama]

Two more posts disappeared :(
So far the ratio is 3 disappeared-to-returned within 2 weeks, and then 14 disappeared altogether from the 2nd of October until today.
Generally, 2 posts disappear every 3 days or so.

Considering I have ~100 posts on my site, that's quite a bit. :/ Never had this happen, I wonder if some parts of the site got hit with a penalty or something.

Despite this, traffic is stabilized week over week.

[Shepherd]

Just saw a Bing SERP listed in google's search results...

[tom_010101]

I've been monitoring 4 websites with Sistrix for a few weeks that are comparable to mine but essentially have nothing to do with each other. All websites behave completely identically... Whether it's keywords, visibility, top-ten rankings, or backlinks, all record identical losses and declines. For me, this further confirms that it simply doesn't have to do with any issues on the website, but rather with the whims of Google 🤷‍♂️.

[Conro]

@tom_010101 the sites continue lost keywords everyday.

[Micha]

I too have Sitrix showing that my site continues to lose visibility, but traffic is increasing daily. It hasn't been running as well as it is now for months. This is all very strange.

[RedBar]

Since the completion of update(s) I have some new metrics for my global site:

October until completion v 2023 average 74.2%
Since completion v 2023 average 136.8%

For my UK hotel site little has changed:

All October v 2023 average 101.13%

How long will this hold I wonder?

[gatormark]

Was there a SERP update recently? The reason I ask is because my traffic has jumped about 23%. However, I don’t know of any updates.

[not2easy]

@gatormark - We're in the aftermath of the core update which was announced as finished 10/19.

[dianys]

Hello, I'm encountering an issue. In addition to the over 60% decrease in traffic following the updates at the beginning of the month, I've identified several links appearing in AHREF's New Backlinks section for about 2 months now. Many of these links become unavailable very quickly, but I'm concerned that this could be causing a -60% traffic drop due to the SPAM UPDATE. What's your opinion? How can I address this situation?

<snip>

[edited by: not2easy at 12:36 pm (utc) on Oct 31, 2023]
[edit reason] Please see Charter [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[dianys]

Edit: When I use site:domain.com, my homepage only appears occasionally, often requiring multiple refreshes. This might be a clue in my situation.