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.

[StupidIntelligent]

Once you are negatively hit. There is no recourse.

Recoveries are very rare and mostly due to other factors.

[superclown2]

The spam update may be over. The spam isn't. 'Authority' sites with next to no content are still riding high over here.

I think Google's definition of spam is 'anything that is not produced by high ad spenders'.

[engine]

Let's see how it looks now it's "complete."
What observations can you see on the SERPs, not just your own site?

[adman]

Once you are negatively hit. There is no recourse.
Recoveries are very rare and mostly due to other factors.

I don't agree.
I have survived couple of this updates.
I was slashed by 40-50% and got back, sometimes even higher.
Recovery was never quick, it takes months, but it does happen.
At the moment, I lost about 45% of traffic, but noticed slight increase by 2-3% since Monday.
Revenue dropped only 15%, so I am not feeling that much down for loss of traffic, but for slow increase.

[Micha]

What observations can you see on the SERPs, not just your own site?

Many small sites that publish good content have disappeared and been replaced by crap (fun fact, I can't even find a site I've been reading for years via Google, and it's unbeatable in terms of quality). What stands out in my area is that (actually, as always) big, well-known sites got a boost, and unfortunately, outdated sites that aren't even mobile optimized. In Discover it looks really bad, as many operators of small websites have reported that the update has completely collapsed the traffic, which I can unfortunately confirm.

I have the impression that Google wants to clean up its index, but has run amok in assessing whether a page is good.

Edit: oh and we should not forget that the spam update is still running, so analyzing probably does not bring much yet

[mhansen]

What observations can you see on the SERPs, not just your own site?

tl:dr - Easily replicated content, regardless of your expertise level - is just content. If someone can copy it (they can!), drop it into an AI tool and command a rewrite (they do!), you're toast. On the other hand, ALL of the unique tools I've built to help the same people, survived and excelled in these last 3-4 updates, across the same domain.

The rest of the story -

In my neck of the web (lead gen, USA - no ads, no reviews, etc) the serps have been gutted of easily reproduced content, including my own business/site that produces expert-level (IMO, with 30+ years of experience in this industry, 6-7 years publishing on this specific website) guides for targeted US consumers. Nearly all the sites I keep track of have experienced the same results, with exception to the likes of Forbes, Bankrate, etc who are not industry experts, but have the Uber-EEAT to consume the space.

My site: 350 pages, roughly 120k/month search visitors over the last year. (WP based site, 98/100 pagespeed and CWV)

Date range of metrics: Sept 1 - Oct 18, -70% or so as of this writing.

1. Marketing/Branding: Well branded, trademarked service. 500+ monthly Google searches for the "brand name + [query]", or variation therof. Outside of social media marketing, we use an email newsletter, timed and automated auto-reponders, etc. Branded CPC campaign.
   
2. Biggest previous challenge: When brand-related searches occurred, Google pushed "Did You Mean" and changed the trademarked term to 2 words, which spawn the highest CPC ads. Also the Uber-EEAT sites replicating similar content within weeks of a top ranking, knocking the site further down.
   
3. Pages negatively affected: 290 or so lost +/-70% of Google search traffic. All of these pages had long-form, easily replicated by AI content and now reside in the gallows of SERP's, positions 10-30 or lower.
   
4. Pages positively affected: Yes, it does happen. 50 or so pages that contain an application-like feature, where the user has to interact to get their answer in return. These pages have increased anywhere from 400% to 2,000%. They have very limited content and unless you know the industry or have experience doing [MyTrademark], you can't easily replicate the content. It's VERY unique, though some others do exist in different forms. Just about all of these pages rank in the top 1-3 space of serps.

So, to say the least, I have switched gears and instead of staying focused on the content that is SO easy to replicate with a copy/paste into an AI tool and saying "rewrite", I have shifted to building more of my application-type pages. On this site, they are done in long-form, very thorough tools with very little text accompanying them.

There are similar, though not as thorough tools on a few other websites, but those also included the 2,000 words of easily replicated text, and those sites tanked just as hard, regardless of the feature being on the page. Hint? Get away from easily replicated content walls of text.

Some of the biggest names in the same space, highly ranked sites that are constantly on TV commercials, etc, also tanked during these last couple updates. +5m monthly users to -300k users. This was no exception and they continue their downward slide, regardless of their ad spend, brand awareness, etc.

Brutal, but now I have plans any several ways to test theories before the next update comes along and wipes away everyone.

[Micha]

And the spam update is also finished
[twitter.com ]

[swright]

@mhansen, thank you for sharing. What were the downgraded pages (yours and your competitors') replaced with in the serps?

[morpheus83]

Now that the update is finally over. Lets see how the rankings stabilize in the days ahead.

[Martin Ice Web]

#1
Last 5 days have been very good. Lots of traffic and sales. But with completing the spam update the full zombie mode is active again. And i think that the update was already completed yesterday.

#2
I don´t know what google considers as spam but 4 times the same text for title h1 2x body is spam in my eyes.
But when i look at the domains then i instantly have the feeling that google matches high rate amazon sellers with serps. There is no other way that this sites can be considered as high compensive, compelling and truthworth sites.
And simultaneously google demoted amazon in mid-range serps ( >5 position).
I guess all this updates are a fight against amazon because they realize that poeple doesn´t use google for product search anymore.

[Conro]

@Martin Ice Web Some of my Google reviews have been demoted to make room for those from Amazon users who don't even know how to use a product and leave negative reviews.

[Razorllama]

Now that the updates are over, here's my report:

1) -65% traffic overall, and the traffic itself is converting worse. My conversions have stayed at a level I'd expect for half the sessions I currently have.
In other words: if I went from 2400 sessions/day to 900, my current conversions have been as if my site had 400-500 visitors/day.

2) Pages are still thrown out of the index. Between 6th and 10th October, several pages got thrown out of the SERPs. A few have returned, but others are still nowhere to be found. They appear on top positions @ Bing and DDG, however.

Another wave of 4 good money makers just disappeared on the 18th of October. We're talking about 0 impressions.

The disappearance is strange due to two factors:

a) Some of the disappeared pages are the same in terms of quality/backlink profile/helpfulness/whatever factor you want to assign to pages that are still ranking high and getting proper impressions.

b) Some of the disappeared pages 'returned' at position 25-40.

Why the parenthesis? Imagine I wrote an article about 'Winter apples' and an article about 'Autumn pears'. 'Winter apples' disappeared from the serps, and 'Autumn pears' post ranks at position 25-40 for the 'winter apples' query.

It makes no sense, yet I have 2-3 articles (who were also good money makers) following this, uh, logic.

3) Some articles have experienced severe impression loss. They still rank at top 1-3 for 15% of the keywords; the other 85% have evaporated. CTR and conversions on them are decent, the KWs are just lost. Some of these impression cuts make sense as they came from the August core update and I was wondering why am I getting impressions for them.

Is anybody still seeing fluctuations? I remember the last core update tanked some of my articles, yet they bounced back up ~10 days after it ended. Wondering if the disappeared pages are there to stay or they'll bounce back, too.

[adman]

Similar situation over here.

What I noticed, by looking at Google Search Console, is that I retained top rankings for keywords consisted of two or more words, but top rankings with one keyword, which is the most important for ranking, is completely evaporated or severely reduced impressions.
On the other hand, CPC increased significantly, absorbing revenue loss which for now is not that bad, around 15% compared to last month.

[renatovieira]

Heavy traffic this morning. Someone else?

[RedBar]

Heavy traffic this morning. Someone else?

Not heavy however Wednesday, yesterday and so far today much more normal genuine page view levels throughout 24 hour periods plus several genuine B2B enquiries. Will it continue?

[mhansen]

@swright - What were the downgraded pages (yours and your competitors') replaced with in the serps?

Much of the space has been filled with ecom/dealer/local company type pages, Reddit, Quora and UCG sites alongside more Google widgets of their own. If anything is remotely related to a product, there are several related product carousels, etc.

[ichthyous]

Heavy traffic this morning. Someone else?

It looks like some of the update was rolled back a bit to me starting yesterday...less of a traffic drop in USA and other anglophone countries this morning, and landing pages that had drops of 25%-70% since October 7th seem to be recovering...except for my home page which is still -40%.

If I look at graphs, the mostly high traffic landing pages that did drop (not all of them did) dropped steeply on October 6th or 7th and stayed down this entire time.

That already followed weeks of zero conversions from the previous updates...so basically the entire month of October shot so far. I think this is the new M.O. for Google...keep covering up the manipulation and traffic theft with updates so we all think it's temporary.

[superclown2]

I think this is the new M.O. for Google...keep covering up the manipulation and traffic theft with updates so we all think it's temporary.

Looking at my stats this morning it is plain that I have gained business on products that are mainly searched for on desktop, and lost heavily on those on mobile. Why? Easy. Google's manipulation with multiple ads, PAA, PASF, and all the other junk they use to push the real results down to oblivion on Android.

Here in the UK there is a class action suite well under way because of this type of behaviour. It is being pointed out that their actions are not only destroying businesses that advertise on the web and preventing new entrants from getting a foothold, but also costing consumers a fortune as prices have to rise to pay the billions that Google extracts, using tactics that can only be described as 'innovative'. OK it will take years to work through the inevitable appeals and delaying tactics but there some hard hitters behind it - and 'lobbying' cuts little ice over here. The sums being claimed are enough to make even G wince.

SERPs wise I am seeing little change in the positions but I have noticed that the visitor numbers I am getting across numerous sites have changed, in some cases dramatically. I have long wondered if the personalisation of results via their cookie is more important than many realise. I guess most of us delete them regularly but most visitors wouldn't know the difference between a cookie and a cream bun and the amount of data that Google has gathered on individual consumers (thanks to ineffective enforcement of privacy legislation) is enormous.

[BlueEyes82]

Something seems to be working again. The previous “screws” continue to be turned. Two other sites have lost 20% since yesterday. Overall, I have now lost 70-80% traffic since September. It's incomprehensible...

It seems like everything I've done for the last 5-7 years was wrong or Google showed "bad" rankings and now everything is "better" - irony off

[Micha]

In fact, I've been seeing some improvement since yesterday afternoon, with articles landing in Discover again. But of course, that may just be a short-term phenomenon. According to Sitrix, my site has lost a lot of visibility in the last two days, and according to Xovi, it has lost visibility for many keywords, especially mobile.

[superclown2]

It seems like everything I've done for the last 5-7 years was wrong or Google showed "bad" rankings and now everything is "better"

You are certainly not alone in that. The next update could easily reverse this.

This is the problem that happens because of the crazy situation that gives a single company the power to decide what is good, and what is bad, depending upon which way their profits are affected.

[RubicCubed]

It seems like everything I've done for the last 5-7 years was wrong or Google showed "bad" rankings and now everything is "better" - irony off

Quality is a constant characteristic that doesn't change easily. Unfortunately Google's appetite to grow profits is also constant which is why we see the serps spammed with so many ad blocks there are 0 organic results displayed without a long scroll. Once we do the long scroll and find the organic results, Google slaps us with those useless people also ask, things to know, etc. boxes. These useless boxes are designed to entice users into clicking them so they are transported to a refined query with another full screen of ads. Google has become nearly pure ad spam and chases users in circles with ads so their queries are never really answered.

[RedBar]

Google has become nearly pure ad spam and chases users in circles with ads so their queries are never really answered.

Well, yes, but accept it for what it is now and has been growing into for several years, a classified ads website, it's that simple.

G will not change this format until either profits fall or people stop using it in serious quantities. Until many of Joe Public realises that there is a world outside of G, FB, T, TT, I and a few others, nothing will change, they have the drugs and they are feeding the masses their regular fix.

We can complain as much as we like however we are the miniscule minority who will rarely be heard or considered since we're nowhere near important enough!

And for the record I finally dumped G in 2010 in case anyone was wondering.

[RubicCubed]

We can complain as much as we like however we are the miniscule minority who will rarely be heard or considered since we're nowhere near important enough!

Agreed. While I do complain about Google, I put my money and efforts into actions that generate results. I know I alone can't change Google or user behavior, and can't rank above Google's ads, but I can and do control where my money/effort is allocated and it hasn't been with Google for quite a few months.

[adman]

Until many of Joe Public realises that there is a world outside of G, FB, T, TT, I and a few others, nothing will change

You basically listed the whole web.

[christianz]

At the moment my main site seems to have fully recovered from all updates since beginning of September.

Traffic started falling: ~1st September
Turnaround and recovery began: ~3rd of October

My smaller sites are still wrecked. That's OK as long as my main site keeps improving (which I highly doubt it will).

Main site in recent days has reached its "glass ceiling" in traffic terms. A quota of some kind that it has never surpassed.

[christianz]

I must add that my revenue per ad impression is severely down compared to 2022 and 2021. So even if traffic was to stay at all time high levels, I would still be making 25% less revenue than last year. And add to that inflation in everything else (but my website ad prices) and really I can't see how many webmasters and small publishers can stay in business in this environment.

[RedBar]

You basically listed the whole web.

A specific sector however surely p0rn is still the most visited / "used" ? And W has to be way up there?

[adman]

So even if traffic was to stay at all time high levels, I would still be making 25% less revenue than last year.

Are you sure you didn't get your traffic increase from the bots?
That could explain revenue loss.
Are your CPC and clicks the same?

[christianz]

@adman

Bots cannot constitute such big difference. Most of them are with appropriate user agent and are not included in GA stats and are not served ad impressions.

My main site only has CPM ads so clicks are not tracked.

[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.