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]

[superclown2]

Drinking too much water can also lead to death. Exaggerating is always harmful

Many toxicologists agree that the misuse of non-prescribed, over the counter medication kills more people than illegal stuff. And the number of lives destroyed by the latter is horrifying.

If Google really believes that these businesses have more expertise than the professionals, and have evidence to prove it, then putting their sites on page 1 may be justified. Otherwise it is simply irresponsible and could cause immense harm.

So no. I don't think for a second that I'm exaggerating.

[Micha]

It's quite simple: CNet is (or was, I don't read the site) a site for technology and not for such things, and if Google were to judge "specialized knowledge" fairly, then the site for this topic should not be at the top of the list. There are specialized sites that are guaranteed to pay more attention to the topic than CNet. Besides, this is just an example, because in principle, being a big publisher and adding something is enough to automatically rank well. What's more, these affiliate articles are supposedly rated negatively by Google.

All in all, this just shows that ranking is not only dependent on factors such as "helbfuel content", but that there is no fair evaluation. And that's exactly the point: if it were fair, it would be up to us what we do with it. But since that doesn't seem to be the case, as the example shows, we are largely powerless.

[RedBar]

I'm going to call this sawtooth Tuesday it's varied that much from hour to hour with the country spread looking much more "normal".

I don't like typing positive aspects too much since things usually then go pear-shaped however at the end of this first 7 days of the month I have already had as many genuine new business enquiries as either the entire months of September or October and, I'm hesitating here, this is more like "things used to be"!

One sunny week does not a summer make, is this possibly the start of a new business cycle?

[Micha]

This week is shaping up to be a disaster and today has already started worse than I've ever experienced. You do research, put hours of work into an article and then Google completely ignores it because you're not a big brand. This has been going on for days now.

We're literally being bled dry. After October and the current crap, I feel like so many others: My website will soon no longer be able to support itself economically if the situation doesn't improve now.

[adman]

I am thinking something, maybe Google should divide it's search into some categories.
Like there are malls that have expensive brands, there are malls that have less expensive brands.
If we apply same analogy, there should be search of only big companies, small companies, individuals...
How can an individual or small company compete with Amazon?
Maybe there should be Google Search Corporate, Business and Individual.
Also maybe Google AI which would only be for AI content.

[morpheus83]

We are live since 2006 and have seen the worst of updates. But nothing like this one. Our downhill started from October 4th and its been steadily going down ever since. There are quite a lot of posts out there claiming 'recovery tips', i however refuse to believe that adding a published and updated on to all the pages will change things.

[adman]

i however refuse to believe that adding a published and updated on to all the pages will change things.

Update to what?
I mean, world didn't start from October update.
Google is not the alpha and omega of the world.

[Micha]

There are quite a lot of posts out there claiming 'recovery tips', i however refuse to believe that adding a published and updated on to all the pages will change things.

These tips are the same as Google's statement that you should write for your readers: Rubbish. People are still puzzling over what exactly is going on.

[morpheus83]

On the bright side have heard stories of people seeing an uptick after updating their old posts. Just not possible for us as we have 29,000 of them.

[christianz]

I'm going to call this sawtooth Tuesday

How about Wipeout Wednesday?

Big drop in traffic (mostly US traffic) coinciding with Semrush spike.

have heard stories of people seeing an uptick after updating their old posts.

Updating something for the sake of updating seems too SEO for my liking....

[muniz900]

Sorry but now Google does a core update every month? Or is it just a period and then they will go back to doing them every 5-6 months?

[Conro]

Have noticed websites recovery? I was previously looking at a continuously growing website that strangely doesn't even have an "about us" page, and it has invasive advertising. Also, the author's real name is unknown.

[Fluff_Nutz]

Another -20%. Despite saying I had lost -44%. It was actually 20%. UA4 was being slow. But if you count both Monday and Tuesday it now adds to a -44% drop in traffic. In just two days. The consistency of these drops and how big of a drop these usually are, really, it just smells of desperation. I think a post from a few days back nails it. G are dying and are just trying to milk it until that day comes.

I now spend most my days on Youtube. Which is more stable, does not go through this crap. Plus is heading in the opposite direction +40%. Long may it remain that way. Since the website business has no chance with Google and their greed.

It's funny I recently got two emails from companies stating that ''they can help my site reach rank #1''. ''Improve my overall traffic''. The only way this will even have any benefit to me is if Google Search changed drastically. No one can do anything to improve anything. We are all helpless. No updating of articles, improved SEO. Nothing will change anything until the ''elephant' learns its lesson. Preferably by a varying degree of deadly options. Axe? Rifle? C4? Nah, but seriously I really dislike Google and those around me know this all too well. You do NOT need a monopoly and you do NOT need to bleed other website businesses dry to stay alive. No way, not when other search companies are able to survive just fine. Its all nonsense and unnecessary. Not to mention sickeningly annoying.

I feel for everyone being hit with negative results. Especially those that avoid AI. The cheating method which is no different to essentially copy pasting other websites. Internet sucks and it does not need to be like this. Again, annoying.

[christianz]

Youtube. Which is more stable, does not go through this crap

Because its Google's own website and they boost it unfairly, all the time every time. Sometimes with up to 20 results on first page.

They are also pushing YouTube videos where video as a medium is inferior to web application. Web platform is much more powerful than video, it just so happens that Google is trying to suppress it for their financial gain.

[oldog]

Talking about "specialized knowledge" makes you laugh out loud when you see that garbage site Quora ranking on top search results from every web troll's Question and " Answers "
boo ha ha haaaaaaa :-))

[RareBit]

Promote YouTube > make more money from the ads..

[Treud]

For me YouTube it's done after having a channel on sex toys for 8 years, it gets bashed in 2 months, received tons of Strikes... Even I didn't updated stuff for long time.
Anyway, will create another one with some editing just to save my bandwidth on some useful videos for my customers (not the mass of YouTube)

[christianz]

@Treud

YT has super capricious, heavy handed and opinionated censorship policy. So unless you are reviewing iPhones, you will get banned after some x amount of time. Or if not banned outright, shadow-banned below all the Priority Publisher channels.

[Fluff_Nutz]

I personally enjoy Youtube and will limit myself to it if I cannot make use of the website aspect because of these updates. Every time I start getting anywhere I am immediately knocked back down once again. This is my life right now, as is same worldwide. To me its pointless. With Youtube there is better growth. Plus the stability too really does make me question my current motive regarding the site. Thus more reason to stick by it.

I'll admit, from a rather selfish point of view, I like the fact that Google are promoting Youtube. It helps us but ultimately I also know why they are doing it too and its not because they care about their creators. They don't. They don't care about anyone but themselves and their sheer SHEER greed. However promoting Youtube in search does not help web publishers so its a 50/50. Would these traffic numbers that I get on Youtube still be as good if it stopped? I believe a lot of people in my niche use Youtube for their primary source of search anyway. Or so I'm lead to believe. I'd like to think so as using Google really puts me off. In fact I'm seeing myself being turned off anything Google related with each passing day.

I do sort of agree on the copyright on Youtube. I have been on that platform for almost 20 yrs now. Far longer than owning a site. Back when I first started one of my channels got terminated in one day. Not sure if it was someone who really didn't enjoy my success, as the channel was growing, fast. Or if it was actually warranted. Regardless I found it super easy to get strikes back then. For the past 6-10 yrs though strikes are more seen as claims. Which can easily be disputed. So I like to think that their copyright system has been much improved over the years.

[saladtosser]

My YouTube channel has taken over my website now, my YouTube channel gets 36.8k views per month and my website gets 37K sessions per month. YouTube makes me £100 per month with zero overhead (excluding time) and website make £100 from adsense with £70 Azure hosting per month! I put 90% effort into website and 10% on YouTube, I think the web is dying because of search engines and I should put 90% of my time into YouTube rather than beating a dead horse with my website going forward!

[Fluff_Nutz]

@saladtosser

Those are exactly my thoughts. For me I also have to pay for writers for the site too. On top of server cost. So much expense and where is it getting me? With Google search, its easy to say, nowhere. Worked my @ss off last year for my site. Working in humid weather throughout the year. Just to see it dropped by 80% by the end of the year. Never really felt motivated after that. Even with hired writers. G killed my motivation and everything.

[Micha]

Even with hired writers. G killed my motivation and everything.

This also applies to me and my team. Today again the best example: We were the first to report on two topics, traffic from Google = 0, but a page that copied our text ranks at the top. That is incredibly frustrating.


Coupled with the feeling of helplessness because there's absolutely nothing you can do, the thought of just quitting is very tempting. But somewhere the website is your own baby (and unfortunately I can't go on YT).

^{Link removed}

[edited by: Micha at 6:22 pm (utc) on Nov 8, 2023]

[christianz]

@Fluff and @saladtosser

I would suggest you also nurture your channels on other video upload platforms (Rumble etc). If alternative platforms flourish, it empowers creators and gives them more safety.

I can't turn into video producer even if I wanted to because my content doesn't make sense as videos. That doesn't stop Google from spamming YT for my keywords, of course. For obvious greed reasons.

[adman]

By the way, the core update is complete and we continue with the review update

No, it's not.
Reviews update is ongoing in parallel with core update.

[Micha]

Reviews update is ongoing in parallel with core update.

According to Google, it has been finalised and the review update has started, see link

[BlueEyes82]

The downward trend has continued since the September update. Some of my pages have now lost 75% visibility.

In the past, the search engine Bing usually had similar rankings to Google (+/- 2-3 positions). I still have top positions on Bing and, thanks to the crash, I get almost the same amount of traffic as from Google.

I have now asked many people what is better about the pages in front of me - none of them have a clue. Except you are not an expert and have more authority.

For some keywords, websites consisting of (1-2 pages) with Google sitelinks rank ahead of me - last updated in 2013 and not optimized for mobile.

But I have a suspicion that we use a lot of clear tables to compare content. Google has viewed this very positively in the past. Many passing websites often only have large, confusing text blogs. Perhaps Google currently only wants to reward pages that provide "enough fodder" for Google Bard - regardless of whether the content is of any use to the user or not. In the past, we usually had the best conversion rate per click compared to competitors - targeted traffic is now a "problem" for Google.

[Razorllama]

Micha, the core hasn't completed yet, you can see it on the status page: [status.search.google.com...]

I gotta say, these simultaneously running algo updates make things even harder.

[Micha]

Oh .. that's right, I misread my mistake.

[samwest]

Hey strangers...it's been over 6 months since my last post. Figured I'd stop by to see that nothing has changed. Happy Holidays!

[christianz]

@samwest

Cheers! lol