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.

[morpheus83]

@Micha I agree the websites affected are across the spectrum.

[Conro]

It's impossible to find something in common among all the websites that have lost traffic. When you ask Google for explanations, they respond as if they were algorithms rather than people. I really don't know what to do.

[Juniya]

@Cyril, you should keep updating and adding new content, Google is STILL trying to fix the issue, they know they f'd up and just because an update is done, doesn't mean they have stopped changing things behind the scene.

They are clearly using a newer version of their AI on their search algorithm and it's not working as expected but if you give up now, your website might never recover when Google does stablize itself, which might take a few more days, weeks or months.

[Sodero18]

As with everyone, we're trying to figure out what these messed up algorithms are doing. When we add or change dates for events on event pages, the pages go down in Google SERPs but go up in Bing and DDG for our key words (top of Bing and DDG below the ads). Presumably because the changes are "minor", they go down in Google. Unfortunately, DDG does have ads but it's not the Google ad storm. We simply have to update pages / posts whether they are minor or not and will have to continue doing that. Event date changes used to be perceived a fresh. Minor changes, typos etc. need to be changed as well.

Since September, we've regularly used Bing and DDG and have downloaded Firefox (which I think is changing to Mozilla in November).

As another poster mentioned, this is significantly affecting web designers, developers, SEO experts etc. and in turn is affecting SMBs which I believe comprise 98% to 99% of businesses in the US and Canada and I'm assuming this is the same elsewhere.

[System]

The following 3 messages were spliced on to an existing thread about Google's Anti-Trust court case: [webmasterworld.com...]

[edited by: not2easy at 4:24 pm (utc) on Oct 26, 2023]
[edit reason] correcting link to split off discussion [/edit]

[aabid099]

I Have a Question, I have Lost Complete Traffic From Google Discover Having (Millions of Impressions) but now zero, it started happening after 10 October any one having the same issue?

[not2easy]

Hi aabid099 and welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

At least you are not alone, there is a thread nearby about that issue where you might find helpful info: [webmasterworld.com...]

[mosxu]

I have to say that the increase they had after the “quality” update this summer just came back to hunt them!

Well that’s because people are not stupid and on the other side everything AI is doing is fricking obvious!

[renatovieira]

Very slow today...

[tom_010101]

@aabid0099 Exactly the same for me... Discover 18 clicks yesterday and videos also crashed extremely.

[ichthyous]

Yes, traffic dropped at 9am sharp until about 2pm, then again at 4pm. Search is down 8% today but traffic from many countries dropped much more: USA -10%, UK -17%, CA -30%, UAE -34%...and oddly traffic from India has been way down for more than a week now.

[Conro]

Is there still anyone who thinks that Google gave visibility to Reddit, Quora, and various forums because they are full of useful content written for people? Useful content is only for their artificial intelligence to train with pre-made answers and questions. Google continues to lose credibility day by day. I hope Reddit truly blocks Google, and if it wants the data, it should pay, as it should pay to all of us whose content it has stolen without permission

[theverge.com...]

[Martin Ice Web]

Yesterday we had a +40% push + 50% more conversions. Today it starts again very, very odd.
For sure something got started yesterday.

[Martin Ice Web]

It's impossible to find something in common among all the websites that have lost traffic

in our e-comm niche, i can tell u what kind of sites gained traffic in reverse u know what sites did suffer.

All sites that gained traffic have just a plain page for every item with just title, h1, short (very short) short description.
None of these sites have HCU something like
- poeple also bought
- suggestions for alternative items with same lenght, color, manufacturer a.s.o.
- no extra text other than manufacturer descrption

I guess google doesn´t want poeple finding different items on another way than google search. U can click on ads if u want to find more.
One exception: amazon

[RubicCubed]

Google is STILL trying to fix the issue, they know they f'd up and just because an update is done, doesn't mean they have stopped changing things behind the scene.

If this is the case, then Google should have rolled back the update long ago. Too many of us in businesses with workers, having served consumers for decades, can't afford this nonsense. The impact on our businesses and worker's livelihoods is real just as our declining opinion of Google is. If what you say is true, then at the very least Google is incompetent and irresponsible to have released such damaging updates that reward the very things Google publicly claims to want to demote. But I think Google doesn't care, feeds us lies and instead is focused on earnings. Because no matter how bad we think Google messes up, they always seem to wring more money out of us.

[Fluff_Nutz]

I like the fact that Reddit claim to be tempted to block Google. Which brings me to my question. Can anyone tell me the code to doing just that? I know it was posted on here a while back but cannot find it. I strongly suggest that everyone blocks G and all the content thieves. They should be paying for our content. So much appreciated on whoever gives me that list again.

[dianys]

Again .. Unconfirmed update from 25th october and now... 27th october! ******* Google! :-(

Link: [seroundtable.com...]

[Conro]

They are making changes to the SERP again. For example if I look at the shopping boxes in the midst of organic results, they no longer expand vertically but horizontally.

[superclown2]

Google is STILL trying to fix the issue, they know they f'd up and just because an update is done, doesn't mean they have stopped changing things behind the scene.

Google HAVE fixed the issue; their earnings from search will increase as a result, as history tells us.

It also tells us that earnings for website creators and everyone else connected with the Web will see their earnings fall, in proportion.

Back to the current situation: yesterday my clicks and conversions fell off a cliff to possibly my worst Thursday for decades; and yet today I am running at twice the usual business for a Friday morning! Nope, the server wasn't down, the positions in the SERPs hadn't changed, WW3 hadn't broken out, so what on earth is going on?

[Conro]

@Fluff_Nutz i think is necessary Block the bot Google, but if you Block google Lost all the positions why Google remove you site from serp

[Fluff_Nutz]

Yes, that is essentially what I meant. There should be a way to block the Google Bot (Bard) without losing your place in the SERPs, right? If blocking Bard means blocking Google itself then, for me, no. I don't want to do that. At least not yet. That is all very much dependant on Google itself. If they end up giving me lower traffic than all other search engines then yes. There would be no reason to hold off at that point. At present I still, somehow, get more traffic from them than any other sources. For now..

Speaking of traffic I saw a minor -6% loss in traffic in comparison to the previous week. Which is fair. We will see what the weekend brings. Usually I tend to see nice traffic growth during that period. But if G are releasing a new update AGAIN, then who knows..

[christianz]

@Fluff_Nutz Use robots.txt to block "Google-extended", it will block Bard. It will not block it from indirectly/via third parties scraping your content but at least your site won't be used directly in the Bard answers (where it will never gain any traffic and only lose traffic).

[ichthyous]

Since the update on or around October 5th I have seen a widening gap between impressions (they keep going up) and clicks (they are slowly declining)

[ibb.co ]

Business is dead, there was a full week where nobody sent a single inquiry through my site. The whole month of October has been very quiet, and October is usually quite busy. The Israel/Gaza situation has also had a dampening effect I think.

[christianz]

Even Google fans at Google reddit and not entirely happy...

[reddit.com...]

[aabid099]

I just want to know what kind of update can hit a good 5 million + discover impressions website, to zero... search is also impacted but at least it's getting impressions and kind of shows improvements day by day (at least shows reasonable fluctuations) but how (zero)? What to do now? should I wait? and hope that it will get better on its own or have to start a new website ( It's my 2-year-old brand .com site year by year I thought it would get better, but after this update) I'm kind of losing all hopes and excitement :(

[ichthyous]

Huge drop today...I'm seeing search traffic -20% and USA traffic is -48% at 11:30am. I am seeing drops of 31% to 78% on my landing pages. I blocked Google Extended and all the other AI scrape-bots in my robots.txt about two weeks ago and I am wondering if this is having an effect. Has anyone else seen a decline in traffic after doing that? Hard to tell with all the updates rolling out back to back.

[StupidIntelligent]

@aabid099

That's how Discover works. Either you get millions of impressions and thousands of clicks but per day, or you get ZERO.

It's always been like that.

It happens when a site is hit with a core update.

[aabid099]

@StupidIntelligent

So Is there any hope it will get solved on its own or do I have to do anything changes or something on my site?

[cfiila]

aabid099 -
like here. By the 5th, my main domain had more than 1 million impressions. On the 6th, the numbers decreased to almost 0. Printings were limited. And more than 2 thousand pages disappeared from discover. Worse: other websites recently created with A.I. were put in place.

[aabid099]

@cfiila
same, a 2 month old site copies all my content even my title and my thumbnails and creates a copy-like site that gets adsense approval starts showing on Discover and ranks number 1 on Google, watching this is very hurtful :(