November 2023 Google Search Observations

[RedBar]

Global site Monday and Tuesday USA traffic -40%

So far today, Wednesday, 40% of my traffic is from the Russian Federation, not bots.

[edited by: not2easy at 12:49 pm (utc) on Nov 1, 2023]
[edit reason] split cleanup - New month, new thread [/edit]

[Razorllama]

^ USA at -15% but I expected that.
However, for some reason today 25% of my total traffic is marked as Direct/None in GA4, first time I see something like this.

[nova88]

me too since 10/27/2023 my total traffic is marked as Direct in GA4, this is the first time I see something like this. while my site is only 2 years old so not very well known

[mosxu]

Questionable traffic today!

[RedBar]

Will things, can things improve this month or are we due for some more turbulence?

[edited by: not2easy at 1:04 pm (utc) on Nov 1, 2023]
[edit reason] splice cleanup [/edit]

[ErrlyBird]

@RedBar

Always turbulence aye?

Time to shake things up.

[Micha]

@RedBar You don't think we'll ever have peace from Google, do you?

[ichthyous]

Traffic is tepid at best...USA is down every day for most of the day and then breaks even by the eve. Everything feels highly throttled again...my home page has lost half of its traffic since update #5 (or was it update #6?). Landing pages alternate taking huge drops from day to day...yet my ranking/visibility is fine. There are almost no new inquiries from the site, and certainly no new sales. I think this is a factor of the new fighting in the middle east, another drop in the stock market, and a general unease. People are not spending.

[Fluff_Nutz]

Not surprisingly but my revenue for October was -11%. RPM is nowhere near where it used to be. So, I agree no one is spending, including Ad companies. No one knows where they are with G and their billions upon billions of updates. The uncertainty is really frustrating, especially from a business perspective. My Youtube channel was also -15% for the whole of October. So, altogether, a -26% loss.

What makes it more frustrating is that I was hoping for October to be a successful month this year. I had plans and goals for the site. Alas, nothing but losses this year, unfortunately. You can certainly feel the uphill struggle in this journey. Its funny though, my Youtube traffic graph was rather steady and stable, despite the 15% loss. Yet I see a huge spike from that freak Sunday a while back. Its the only other noticeable difference. If it had remained I could have ended with a positive end to the month. Alas, G always takes. I'm still waiting for that traffic they took from me last year. Zip.

[RedBar]

Trying to fathom out what is happening is extremely difficult right now. October had my lowest page views of the year at 89.5% of my 2023 average with the last couple of weeks very topsy-turvy BUT in the last two weeks I have received more genuine bulk trade enquiries and orders than in the previous two months.

Decades of trade trends and predictability have gone out of the window completely for the moment.

[Micha]

I should not have looked at the statistics, officially the worst day of the year. If this continues, then it is no longer worth writing.

[RedBar]

Extremely slow today on my usually busiest day of the week. With just over 3 hours remaining of my Googleday I'm at 72%, more than a poor start to November.

[mosxu]

This is a very busy season I don’t buy that people are not spending,,,

[tom_010101]

It's not because of the people. Google has simply and plainly moved your websites into oblivion and won't change that. That's becoming clear to me now.

[RubicCubed]

I don’t buy that people are not spending

They are buying, but not on Google because Google has hidden organic results with so many ads. It's getting hard to justify wasting anymore time with Google because we get so little in return for our efforts. Better to work on improving visibility elsewhere since Google has essentially locked us and our products out of their results unless we pay a heavy toll for their ads.

[superclown2]

Google doesn't seem to be even trying to answer anything other than plain vanilla queries. I tried queries today that could hardly be called long tail (think 'red tailed unicorns', and all I got was 'unicorns' from so-called authority sites) but it was page three or thereabouts before I found anything resembling proper answers. As a search engine Google is way past it's sell by date.

Back to DDG as usual.

[Razorllama]

I wonder if, similar to the Discover bug, the core updates didn't have something inherently bugged for some users/sites too.

Some of my disappeared pages bounced back, but over the past few days, I've had 3 more disappear. Several articles have appeared/re-appeared since the 14th of October, even after the dual updates finished their rollout. Hanging around Twitter etc. I see plenty of people complaining about the same.

I still have two articles that completely flatlined after Oct 12th -- and the weird thing is, the current Page 1 doesn't serve enough results to answer the query properly either. Really weird.

[mhansen]

Google has simply and plainly moved your websites into oblivion

This could be the 2nd organic position with the way G have cluttered the SERP's.

After the HCU, Core and Spam updates, I've found that a single position drop from 2rd to 3rd is a nail in the coffin to most content. It's not about the content or it's quality, it's about driving the most revenue to the Google ecosystem as possible and assuring others (us) are kept out of the transaction at it's most valued point (first click). If you've read any of the discovery documents in the FTC case it's as clear as day what the G strategy is. Their goal is not to "deliver the most relevant answers to their users' search queries", it is to "maximize the investment value to their shareholders", which is their fiduciary responsibility by law.

*Edit for typo

[christianz]

I tried queries today that could hardly be called long tail (think 'red tailed unicorns', and all I got was 'unicorns' from so-called authority sites)

This is extremely annoying. Search terms are treated not like a command to a computer that serves you but the computer (Google/cloud/AI) treats you like it is the master and knows better what you want.

And yes - these so called authority sites are "so called" because they are not real authorities. What is the percentage of population that still respects the large media outlets?

Same goes for the crazy boosting of government .gov sites. I don't understand what is the justification of boosting them. Government is no divine authority, it is just government. Neither are Universities (.edu domains).

It is some form of creeping totalitarianism.

[superclown2]

If we are wondering why search results are getting so poor, it seems there is a reason. It has been disclosed at the trial that Ben Gomes, once the head of search, pointed out back in 2019 that if visitors needs to scroll down a page or three to find a relevant result, more ads can be served to them. This may well be the reason why the results today, as I pointed out above, are so pathetically bad for anything more complicated than the simplest search terms.

I shall refrain from commenting.

[BigKat]

I've found that a single position drop from 2rd to 3rd is a nail in the coffin to most content. It's not about the content or it's quality, it's about driving the most revenue to the Google ecosystem as possible

Even ranking #1 is worthless (no traffic) with four text ads above. It's most definitely about the money for Google. I just wonder how long it will be until Google starts letting staff go who work on the organic results? Maybe Google's AI needs to mature a bit more before all queries are handled by AI to eliminate organic results completely, except for maybe a 1x1 pixel image for legal attribution purposes.

[Micha]

And moving on, Google has launched the November Core Update.
[twitter.com ]

[swdcreative]

Seeing drops in the SERPs since yesterday. Anyone know what’s going on?

Some sites are seeing gains and lot seeing drops. Is this the new norm?

I’ve been doing quite well with all the updates except for whatever is going on right now

Update: I see there is a November core update 🤦🏻‍♂️ all these updates really make me want to quit SEO

[Razorllama]

OK, I'm gonna be serious - is this the single most heated-up timeframe in terms of algo updates?

That makes it 3 core updates in ~2 months, not to mention the HCU and spam. I've been around since early 2015ish and I don't remember things going as haywire.

[Micha]

And in the next few weeks we can look forward to another review update as well. .[url]https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2023/11/q-and-a-on-search-updates[/url]

What does Google's search team actually do between updates? Soon, that will only be enough for a trip to the toilet.

[Meatboat]

[twitter.com...]

November core update dropped today (face melting)

[ichthyous]

I knew something was up...traffic up 22% today

[swdcreative]

Yeah started 2015 as well. It never use to be this many updates in a year. Now it seems like every week Google is doing something.

I’m sure it has a lot to do with AI…

[edited by: swdcreative at 12:18 am (utc) on Nov 3, 2023]

[Treud]

New update, so that’s what I’m tanking this time, let’s see after the rollout complete. I’m doing also some clean up on website, not for SEO but for me, and customers :D
But my overall traffic from the hosting is increasing, so google going down (-20%), traffic going up (+30% since a few days) from WP Engine billable visits. Traffic should come from somewhere…. (They don’t counts bots).

[nova88]

Google’s November 2023 core update is now rolling out and may take up to two weeks to complete.

[developers.google.com ]

[edited by: not2easy at 2:30 am (utc) on Nov 3, 2023]
[edit reason] splice cleanup [/edit]