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]

[christianz]

@Fluff_Nutz

That's because if you produce video content for their #*$!ty video site you are called "Creator" while if you develop/author your own websites or applications, you are something between annoyance and competitor.

[superclown2]

Had I relied solely on Amazon, or searched Google to get their Amazon ad results, I would have wasted a significant amount of money. But someone has to pay for Google's overpriced ads, and I'm glad in my example it wasn't me being gouged.

This is what really bugs me - so many people say that Google is a free service and yet it is the public who eventually pay for their massive profits! Isn't there some way of educating them?

Sometimes I really wonder what has happened to common sense.

In the meanwhile many of our pages are high in the SERPs today for products we have never stocked and probably never will. Hardly surprisingly the bounce rate has increased enormously so goodness knows what effect this will have on our company's reputation. We will not be the only ones who will be affected by this.

Sites that do actually stock these products are way down on pages 2+. Masses of ads in between of course.

[tom_010101]

the last 3 days show the lowest traffic in 5 years. I still have something like that

[Micha]

@tom_010101 same here ... and the joke: Sitrix says my website is ranking much better again. It just has absolutely no effect.

[tom_010101]

For me, Sistrix says it's getting worse, and it's getting worse... And nobody knows why.

[Micha]

Well, I'm beginning to assume that you can forget about these figures anyway. What's the point of ranking well with a keyword if you have a lot of adverts, videos etc. in front of it?

[superclown2]

For me, Sistrix says it's getting worse, and it's getting worse... And nobody knows why.

Yes, we do know why. Google, sacrificing their usefulness as a one-time search engine, squeezing even more profit out of the pockets of the public.

[RubicCubed]

This is what really bugs me - so many people say that Google is a free service and yet it is the public who eventually pay for their massive profits! Isn't there some way of educating them?

Google definitely is not free and is actually quite expensive. The cost of organic SEO, before its death, and ads all get rolled into the cost of the products/services consumers purchase. I don't think there is any way to educate the public about this because even the mental wizards working in Government (regulators and politicians) are too dumb to see it or simply ignore it for whatever reason.

Sometimes I really wonder what has happened to common sense.

There is none. Amazon pulls in billions in taxpayer subsidies to help build more warehouses to distribute mostly Chinese seller's goods. Then people wonder why we can't compete with China and are somehow perplexed at what it will take to bring manufacturing back? The idiocy within Government, and the policies they promote, leaves me without much hope things will ever change.

[samwest]

@christianz - you hit the nail on the head. Ever since 2010, and just a year or two prior, we (webmasters) have been considered the enemy of Google, and treated as such. Put out a stupid video, and you rise to become an online millionaire.

[tom_010101]

@Micha you are from Germany? what percentage of traffic has your site lost since August/September? So overall? For me it's about 60%

Greetings Tom

[RedBar]

Insofar as my global site is concerned today, Sunday, is my fifth consecutive day of weekend traffic levels at -35% v 1-21 November 2023 furthermore this is -57% v November 2022 and -72.7% v November 2020.

Do you know what is really bewildering to me? My last 5 days USA% share of traffic is still precisely the same! Throughout all the garbage G does to us my country traffic sources remain extremely consistent. I say bewildering since if G were creaming-off the top with localisation etc then surely my actual overall USA traffic percentage would have gone down but no, all my most popular countries have consistently remained the same.

Of course this does mean that what they are manipulating they are doing so in a very consistent manner.

[Micha]

@tom_010101 Yes, I am, it's about 55 per cent. However, I always have short phases in between where traffic goes through the roof, usually for two to three days, then it goes downhill again (today seems to be the start of another such phase).

[adman]

@Micha Yes, I am, it's about 55 per cent.

How much is that in dollars? :) Just kidding...

I lost about 60% initially, but I recovered 10%, so total for now I am at a loss 50%.

[Micha]

How much is that in dollars?

If I ran a shop, you would have made me cry by now at the latest. But seriously: my website's revenue is not so dependent on Google because we market the advertising space ourselves, so no Adsense or anything like that. It's more complicated, but a few days ago we realised once again that we can react more flexibly to problems.

[superclown2]

In mobile I am now seeing advertisements scatted amongst the mobile SERPs labelled with the term 'ad' instead of the usual 'sponsored'. Both labels were in a smaller font than in the past.

Another attempt to get visitors to click on ads, whilst thinking that they were generic results? If so I'm not sure how much lower Google can sink.

[renatovieira]

Search Console is down... Somebody else?

[RedBar]

We're nearly at the end of November with our quietest month ahead and overall traffic levels for 2023 at 72.85% v 2022 for our main global site.

We're going to let this run until the end of December simply so that we can compare many year-on-year site data. Millions of visitors per month disappeared in 2010 with G's massive image theft nonetheless genuine business traffic was still generated however I (personally) / we (the company) feel that this classified ads scheme has not been working for us since the scamdemic, now there's yet another coincidence.

The reality at the momet is that a local hotel site is generating more traffic than a large (7.500 employees) manufacturing global exporter of many years, "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark" one may wonder?

[christianz]

Search Console is down... Somebody else?

Same. But there is little to no utility to search console anyway.

[christianz]

Last two weeks are constant decline. Especially worse in the last week. AI Spam and SEO content is winning (again) and Google is sabotaging what they achieved in early November.

[Conro]

@renatovieira error 500 for me. Google have only problems

[MarvinG]

@Redbar

@MarvinG

Oh dear, you're in the health sector, there is an acronym for this however I can't remember what! YML ?

This sector has had several poundings over the years with all SEs trying to flush-out all the scam sites with, as you note, unsuccessful purges. There used to be several posters here from valid health sites who've suffered similarly and I do know of a few who were totally wiped out as collateral damage.

Maybe someone else experienced in this sector could advise?

I know niches like health and finance are being hit hard (your money or your life indeed). I have not been hit like this in the past, because I post genuine content. Also real author profile / about me page, where I see a lot of sites with fake 'team members' etc ranking high still.

Currently working on changing the lay out of the website to make it look more like a brand / business than a personal blog. Maybe that helps to get some trust back from Google. I think I am put into the blog / affiliate blogs box by Google.

[tom_010101]

I am very sure that it will not work. I do have a blog, but with over 30,000 blog posts, it's a very large one that is essentially perceived as a magazine. However, for the first time in the history of my website, after over 10 years, I was affected by an update and almost daily the visitors are decreasing.

[RedBar]

@MarvinG

Maybe that helps to get some trust back from Google.

IMO this is not a trust issue since as tom_010101 says above he has 30K professional post over 10 years. My global site has been online since 1993, it has 10+K of images and 5+K pages.

It is an international repository of information for my industry widgets available on a global basis and there is only one other site like it on The Net from China. For 90+% of keyword enquiries either they or us rank #1 or 2. The only time we do not is when the search is for several top paying keyword phrases in the USA.

I see and talk with the Chinese regularly at international trade fairs and only this last week in Poland they admitted that they too had been hit hard the last few months.

This is a Google-derived manipulation but for what reason? Ad money we know about however many I speak to have seen such a drop in their ROI even that seems questionable.

I wish someone else would throw in some other possible reasons.

[samwest]

A bit OT, but proof that Google heavily manipulates results data. Been saying it for over a decade, and now solid proof at : <snip>

[edited by: not2easy at 6:07 pm (utc) on Nov 27, 2023]
[edit reason] Please see Charter [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[Micha]

@samwest this website is nonsense and proves nothing.

[l1fejosh]

Had great keyword improvement before this update, has 1.4k on Semrush, dwindled down -20% to 988...pretty scared for how many we may lose this week.

[mhansen]

Google has jumped the shark!

I spotted an odd #1 result in a completely random query about automotive scratch repair and who did I find? Synchrony. Yes, the credit finance banking company for large retailers. SEMR shows they've grown from 300k monthly visitors in Aug 2023 to nearly 3m in less than 90 days, and in topics that have absolutely nothing to do with credit, banking, retail finance, etc. They are killing it on scratch repair, best of lists, etc. Want to know about auto repair, like the lifespan of brake lines or the cost of radiator repair? They're the source of the best information according to Google. Not the mechanic down the street. Not the auto specialty shops on the web, etc. No, synchrony bank, the place for credit cards.

Google is being played by these super-large brands as they get away with writing content specifically for search engines - where us who lack the uber-eeat authority but have years of real-world experience in our chosen fields are buried in the washout.

It's a joke.

[Micha]

It's getting more and more idiotic, people are already boasting that they've flattened the competition. They analysed the site and used an AI to churn out 1,800 articles. And Google rewards this kind of thing with good rankings. [twitter.com ]

[christianz]

I spotted an odd #1 result in a completely random query about automotive scratch repair and who did I find? Synchrony. Yes, the credit finance banking company for large retailers. SEMR shows they've grown from 300k monthly visitors in Aug 2023 to nearly 3m in less than 90 days

Relying on off-site factors and off-Internet "authority" was always going to end up in a disaster. You could be the biggest brand or organization off-Internet but on the Internet and in specific niche you can still be nobody. An obscure site with zero physical presence and zero authorship info can be the biggest niche authority by far.

As a search engine, how do you detect these "Internet authorities"? There is no good solution and that is the root of these problems. Having AI writing tools like ChatGPT widely available makes this problem 10 times worse than it already is.

[superclown2]

As a search engine, how do you detect these "Internet authorities"?

It should be fairly simple and I wouldn't be surprised if Google is already capable of solving this. They already know who, and what, these companies are and an analysis of what the website has specialised in in the past, compared to the thousands of new pages on a completely unrelated topic, should raise a few red flags.

Mind you I suspect that G has other more urgent matters to think about right now. And would they want to upset those that perhaps spend megabucks on advertising, at a time when they are using all kinds of tricks to squeeze out the maximum income?