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.

[EditorialGuy]

I am now finding it harder to search for what I really want, than I did 20+ years ago. The reason is the commercialization of search, and the biases of the search engines.

I think an even bigger reason is the vastly larger number of pages on the Web compared to 20+ years ago. In other words, more competition (some legitimate, some not).

It's hard to imagine the situation improving in the foreseeable future. In the AI era, anyone can own a content farm.

[christianz]

My oldest, best and biggest site was up substantially yesterday. If this was to continue I would even say that Google finally got something right with this update...

But more than likely my oldest site will get "penalized" in coming days anyway. My other sites already are and reports in this thread are not exactly encouraging.

This update seems to be very aggressive and broad reaching. The spam problem is super severe so it should not surprise anyone.

[renatovieira]

Right now, I see intense movement in my SERPs.

[superclown2]

I think an even bigger reason is the vastly larger number of pages on the Web compared to 20+ years ago. In other words, more competition (some legitimate, some not).

I would think that more competition would mean more chance of me finding what I was looking for, not less. By now, two decades later, a good search engine should be capable of telling the legitimate from the not.

20 years ago Google was a superb search engine and they tried to give the best results for searchers. Now they are an advertising agency trying to make the most profit. I can't remember if it was Larry or Sergey who said that the two were incompatible but the statement was correct.

[EditorialGuy]

After three days when our overall page views were down 22 percent (week over week), today was down a whopping 36 percent.

Google traffic was down 42 percent from a week earlier.

This is for an established editorial site that normally feels very little impact from Google updates, and which actually benefited slightly from the recent HCU.

(FWIW, our top 10 pages were down 22 percent from a week earlier, with the same pages being in the top 10 on both dates.)

[robert976]

EditorialGuy, it's the war. You will be fine next week

[RedBar]

@EG

Having known you under EFV with your insights, experience and knowledge plus the rationality "we" try to conject, whatever is happening with traffic right now is not "normal" insofar as to the existence of Google.

This does not seem to be a SERPs ranking issue, it "seems" to be something else however precisely what I cannot yet conclusively decide.

I am now experiencing on ALL sites, both national and global, completely different traffic patterns unllike I've ever seen before.

Is this G or is this the current state of generi global politics?

Or Autumn / Fall ?

[tom_010101]

I can currently see on my website that many new keywords are being added daily. An unusually large number are being added every day. However, these have no impact on the traffic. Currently, the traffic is about 70% below the traffic in August.

[Martin Ice Web]

is it only me or has the suggestion box from google become more stupid then before? It suggests complete nonsens when tipping in a search phrase. It also seems to disregard certain keywords to complete a suggestion. If this is the same algo that are used for search results then i don´t wonder about current bad results.

[renatovieira]

G real-time analytics is down. Has anyone else noticed this?

[saladtosser]

Yes just noticed, thought id been hit but this makes me feel better

[mosxu]

Webmaster tools suggests how to create content! An ecommerce site is not in educational business the way to keep customers happy is price and quality not creating content for the sake of it!

The last updates expected e-commerce websites to be useful creating even more junk!

There is almost nothing one can read all ranked content is done for search engine so much bla bla and articles are so long without any helpful tips

Content out of thin air is the problem!

[superclown2]

is it only me or has the suggestion box from google become more stupid then before? It suggests complete nonsens when tipping in a search phrase. It also seems to disregard certain keywords to complete a suggestion

Google has been ignoring many of the keywords I have put in for ages. Plus what they put in the suggestion boxes is usually from American websites, whilst I'm in London.

It is cheaper, faster and more profitable for Google to create plain vanilla search results. Plus the worst the results, the more ads get clicked. I've personally found it useless for serious searches for at least a couple of years now.

[Fluff_Nutz]

And thanks to AI the whole content out of thin air is a bigger problem than ever. People just use it to make money, so they do not care. They are also stupid enough to believe that AI is 100% accurate too. It, of course, is not. The internet is dead. Google can't keep up with it or even care. As long as they are able to continue stealing content and make profits.

But we can and likely will talk about this well into the future. Only action can solve this problem but what action? How do we even comprehend changing this situation? The net is being run into the ground. It's more about money than helping searchers find their info. Greed. This whole world is full of it.

Today my site is down by -32%. It was rather steady, granted less than what it should be due to a mix of both these constant updates and having to be abandoned from time to time. I just don't have time or motivation to keep working on the site. Due to G and their antics to keep the numbers going. I'm having to find a solid source of income to keep my writers going. Which is really ridiculous. Because none of this would be the case if G weren't again, so greedy. I mean do they even need to be this greedy to keep their business afloat? Is all of this necessary. Are they struggling?

I could turn to AI to make the traffic and articles a bit more consistent. However, AI is one of the problems on the net and I refuse to become one of those problems. Though it has crossed my mind many times before. Also, the lack of motivation is still there and too is the uncertainty. All this effort just for the traffic to magically disappear the next. Hm.. so many questions and issues that can all be avoided if G were more open, not likely to happen, or if they would just flat out slow down these updates.

EDIT: It would be interesting if these updates did not slow down. Then more and more businesses no longer found profit in the net. So more websites got closed. The internet became more of a wasteland than a lively base for knowledge. What would happen then? An interesting thought. Where would we go for that knowledge without the internet? G need content creators. They need their content but if they no longer found it profitable then what do they do? Likely to never happen but would the smartest move be to stop? Only then will G realise their mistakes?

[JesterMagic]

While seeing marginal increases in rankings in September thanks to the Core update I see our niche has really been affected by the algo updates in Oct. So far it looks we dropped about 25-29% in traffic loosing some main keywords that relate to our content. Our site is almost 20 years old and we have seen our ups and downs but these last 3 or so years it has been a fairly steady decline in traffic as SPAM and poor content by the big publishers (that are pushing into all niches that offer some sort of affiliate program to survive) have taken over the top rankings.

[ichthyous]

Seems like almost back to normal today...the improvement started yesterday 10/12 at 11am est. Just like that, back to normal. So, no, this is not the middle east fighting that caused such a huge drop for days. But probably contributed to a bit of the decline.

[Micha]

@Ichthyos For you it's up, for me it's down today and really down, the last few days the traffic from Discover in particular was up, today it's dead.

[Juniya]

@ Redbar -- I said Google has a moral decision because even this DOJ lawsuit is exposing what most of us probably assumed, the Google searches results are 'manually' manipulated for the benefit of Google and not the consumer and or publishers(us the webmasters).

The issue is pleasing shareholders but to what end? Google has to accept that it cannot be growing year in and year out with record profits, it's better to accept reality much like Microsoft and let reality set the course instead of manually manipulating results at the cost of your brand and reputation.

All of this is being exposed now in the DOJ case, since we can't share links here, just search "Thomas Höppner’s Google Search Trial" - The link should be to his LinkedIn post.

[BlueEyes82]

@Micha
The same on my pages. After the September update I thought that things could only go up, but the core update in October is exactly the same. Since then 60-70 percent loss. All of my competitors are also affected. It particularly affected comparison sites of various tariffs. It is possible that targeted action has been taken against affiliates since September.

[BigKat]

An ecommerce site is not in educational business the way to keep customers happy is price and quality not creating content for the sake of it!

Google ignores our content regarding our product safety certifications/compliance and instead favors the unsafe products our Chinese competitors dump on Amazon. What Google says and what they do are usually the opposite. Google subjecting their users/consumers to unsafe products is a prime (pun intended) example of how Google values their revenue above all.

[ghostofseo]

some good info in here, although it's a very long read.

search for "Google's Helpful Content Update Full Review, Analysis and Recovery" - Ironically searchenginelab has the first result - EVEN WHEN BE QUOTED with the EXACT article title which is actually the second listing the on-page url.

Just with the above, typing the exact name of an article title in Quotes and Google still can't figure out what I'm looking for? Sadly search is going to sh*t quickly...

[edited by: ghostofseo at 6:36 pm (utc) on Oct 12, 2023]

[EditorialGuy]

An ecommerce site is not in educational business the way to keep customers happy is price and quality not creating content for the sake of it!

To borrow an overused phrase, Google Search "is what it is." It indexes and serves up results for text, images, or video, a.k.a. "content." I don't think Google has ever claimed to be an authoritative rating service for e-commerce buyers, although it has made a halfhearted effort to publish reviews.

Maybe there's an opportunity for a clutch of billionaires to create an "e-commerce Google." The difficult part (besides coming up with an effective algorithm) would be in convincing buyers to use it instead of just relying on Amazon.

[BigKat]

I don't think Google has ever claimed to be an authoritative rating service for e-commerce buyers, although it has made a halfhearted effort to publish reviews.

But Google has claimed the importance and value of EEAT. When it comes to profiteering from the sale of unsafe goods, Google tosses all that EEAT nonsense out the window. Let the buyer beware, especially when using Google...

[superclown2]

It is possible that targeted action has been taken against affiliates since September.

Targeted action has been taken against affiliates for well over a decade. Google sees them as unnecessary and they claim to be only interested in the primary suppliers.

That's a bit rich when those same primary suppliers are buried under mega sites that spend heavily on Google but are still just affiliates themselves, forcing the real producers to buy back the business that is rightfully their own.

They used to have hordes of people checking sites manually, giving affiliates penalties for allegedly 'thin content' even though many of these sites had first class, in-depth reviews. Now they do the same thing algorithmically, much cheaper.

[Micha]

@BlueEyes82 will probably come in waves, now it's Germany's turn. In my area, the competition is once again making good gains, but I already know the pattern, next week it will probably be the other way round again.



<snip>

[edited by: not2easy at 12:38 pm (utc) on Oct 13, 2023]
[edit reason] Please see TOS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[swright]

@ghostofseo, thanks for that. If what's in there is true, then it just confirms my impression that the HCU is the dumbest update G has done and that their idea of helpful content is completely divorced from reality. After years of favoring comprehensive topic coverage and well-written content, now penalizing pages for the same things and elevating pages that have neither? E-how style articles are again in.

[ghostofseo]

@swright

helpful content

To me that term is actually not helpful at all. Say you run a site about vegan recipes. People that are vegan might totally find the articles to be relevant, yet someone eating Big Macs on the regular won't find a vegan recipe helpful.

It's like someone at Google has unchecked power to decide what "type" of content and "categories" are no longer "helpful"

adjective for helpful "giving or ready to give help."

Yet Google or an algorithm now decides what's considering the definitions of giving help?

Is this any different than say Facebook censors, xyz political party is bad, so we shouldn't show there content....

[Martin Ice Web]

since 3 days google is in full zombie mode. Even sites with security risks are in top 10. google has become realy, realy, realy bad.

[Razorllama]

Conversions are at -73% compared to the last period; right now I have 10 articles going at -90% impressions (some are still at 0!) and a dozen more parachuted into low page 2 from position 2-4 beforehand.

9 years in this, the first time I've seen such mayhem on any of my sites.

[insideout]

@Martin_Ice_Web I strongly agree, last three days my main website lost more than 60% of its traffic. I lost all motivation to keep publishing new articles.