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]

[KaseyM]

Worst weekend in 5+ years.

[superclown2]

Worst weekend in 5+ years.

Never mind. Google's profits will be up, and that's the main thing.

On a more serious note, I am finding that my sites that rely on plain vanilla search terms are still doing reasonably well (considering the googlespam they have to compete with) but more specialist ones are nosediving. The reason? On page one Google is simply ignoring words in long tail queries in order to force more clicks on ads.

You want information about red long tailed unicorns rather than just a site selling unicorns? Sure, you'll find them on page 3 if you want to scroll past acres of junk, ads, and irrelevant videos (filled with even more ads of course).

How anyone can describe them as a good search engine (which they undeniably were once) is beyond me.

[adman]

This is the end, beautiful friend
This is the end, my only friend

[Conro]

In addition to this trash can of Google, there are also other search engines. Just make them known to people, and surely they will find something better.

[socialengaged]

G put Videos in the serps much more predominat than ever, as well gave more visibility to FAQs. and pushed a lot google shopping for a while on SERPS too (he got 2 bln $ fine from europe for this). it's playing with our content on its serps, thus taking content and money from us onto the serps directly.
nothing we can do about this. traffic goes down while rankings stay the same, because all those elements like videos and faqs have no rankings in our tools. that's why we dont lose much rankings, but yes we lose clicks. this is f****** frustrating because you know you can't do much about this. if not showing your face on youtube or trying to get to the faqs clicks too. its a pain in the *** maybe better to go back to offline where reality still like we knew. because online changes are much faster than offline, thus this robots and ai things are speeding up everything. remember our inner strenght and power, that's what we have left. all the rest, is a mirage, simply illusions, like in the matrix. forget religion, get back to Faith. love you all <3

[Conro]

@socialengaged In addition to what you've rightly described, there's also the fact that Google is deindexing sites, causing a loss of keywords day by day. I know excellent sites, even mentioned on TV and in newspapers, but they continue to lose thousands of keywords every day. Google's goal is to provide quick answers to users by using our rewritten content without giving us anything (for it this is the AI). I will convince everyone I know to stop using Google because it has betrayed us and it continues to use the content of those who have worked hard without giving anything in return, content that used to bring in visits.

[adman]

. Google's goal is to provide quick answers to users by using our rewritten content without giving us anything (for it this is the AI).

This is serious issue that will have to be addressed.
Google cannot use content without compensation.
They will though continue using it until they face legal charges, like all other AI tools.

[Micha]

This is serious issue that will have to be addressed.

You're right, but what can you do about it? Blocking Google's AI bot, like ChatGPT, doesn't work and most of us are too small to take legal action. At the moment, we can only watch.

[Razorllama]

Either GA4 real time is bugged, or I haven't had any visitors for close to two hours now... Seems like I challenged the big G mentioning I have no significant traffic fluctuations/drops earlier...

[mysitegothithard]

My website was destroyed, my income fell by 90% and I am now surviving on my financial reserves. I still can't believe this is all happening after so many years.

[adman]

Either GA4 real time is bugged, or I haven't had any visitors for close to two hours now... Seems like I challenged the big G mentioning I have no significant traffic fluctuations/drops earlier...

It's heavily bugged for the last 3 months.
Realtime is not working often at all, and often it aggregates all visits in one minute.

[adman]

My website was destroyed, my income fell by 90% and I am now surviving on my financial reserves. I still can't believe this is all happening after so many years.

Sorry to hear that, man.
Google wiped out many of us, if that's any conciliation.
My income has fell 10% last month, and I expect -25% this month.

[allhearts]

As the month goes on, search traffic also declining for me.

[RedBar]

@adman

My income has fell 10% last month, and I expect -25% this month.

A cheeky question! Is this income from realworld product sales, affiliates or advertsing like Google AdSense?

@mysitegothithard
The same question to you. I'm just fishing for any similarities.

[mhansen]

A cheeky question! Is this income from realworld product sales, affiliates or advertsing like Google AdSense?

I'll jump in to help you have a data point. We are down roughly 60-70% in top line revenue since the HCU rolled out. Site is funded by lead gen. It's in the affiliate space but not via banners or full automation. We gather leads, validate, then it goes to partners.

Part of the drop in lead rev is also attributed to some changes I made on the site after HCU and removing non-performing CTA's sitewide.

[adman]

@RedBar

A cheeky question! Is this income from realworld product sales, affiliates or advertsing like Google AdSense?

No cheeks, pure AdSense.

[mhansen]

No cheeks, pure AdSense.

Were the ads placed into specific locations manually, did you use a third-party service like AdThrive/Raptive or Mediavine, etc, or just use the Google provided "auto-placement" ads feature?

I ask because I have personally seen many people with Adsense partners like Adthrive/Raptive etc, completely lose 80-90% or more of their traffic in the early days of the HCU update. This was regardless of the content quality and many very popular, well published websites were not exempt. I think this is where the adsense team and search team send conflicting messages and Google's own preferred partners plastered ads into every space they could manage, thus hurting publishers who trusted them to abide by Googles' own guidelines.

[honestman]

Bigger is better, clearly, from my vantage point. Large sites dominate everywhere; smaller sites are relegated to pages 2 & 3 at a minimum.
And all this after scrolling through the endless SERP ads and clickbait answers that lead one astray. I am using Bing and its AI more to get info and links. It's not perfect, but it's not entirely controlled by what G deems the "too-big-to-fail" websites and heavily SEO'd content. Just a big circle j**k.

[markmaster]

How's it look today. We took a crazy drop on our main keyword overnight. Any shaking happening?

[adman]

@mhansen

Were the ads placed into specific locations manually, did you use a third-party service like AdThrive/Raptive or Mediavine, etc, or just use the Google provided "auto-placement" ads feature?

Auto-ads, no other third-party service.

[Ingall]

I asked Google Bard why Google is killing small niche expert sites.

Answer from Google Bard:

Google is destroying small niche expert sites for two reasons:
Google's algorithms are designed to rank the most relevant and highest quality content. Small niche sites often cannot compete with the large, established sites that have more resources and expertise.

Then I asked Google Bard why Google thinks that, for example, a large site about lawnmowers has more expertise about medicines than a doctor who runs a small niche blog.

The answer:
Google doesn't believe that big sites always have more expertise. In some cases, small expert niche sites can actually offer more expertise than large, established sites.
However, there are a few reasons why Google generally sees large sites as more trustworthy and informative:
Large sites typically have more resources available to create high-quality content. You can afford professional writers, editors, and designers who are capable of creating informative and engaging content.

I ask myself why we should actually create high-quality content when the authority of a site is the only thing that counts. And what's with Google's lie that content is king.

I can create the best, highest quality content. If a large site simply places the keyword in the title and creates 3 question marks as content, they will rank ahead of my site.

[adman]

That's how things work in life.
Big fish eat small fish, and small fish eat plankton.
We get plankton.

[ami3810]

@adman unfortunately, it is even worse, as in our niche even content-scrapping websites are ranking better for our content, hence, we don't eat plankton.

As per the top search result: "Apart from sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water that plankton need, algae, bacteria, trash and debris known as detritus, and microscopic animals such as rotifers and protozoa are also necessary nutrients required for plankton to thrive and survive amidst oceans and freshwater."

We eat trash. That sums the whole story with Google up.

[Micha]

Danny Sullivan writes on X that many improvements are on the way (if I understand this correctly). Since he also mentions that those who create good, human-centered content "should do well," perhaps we can hope that content will become king again. Source [twitter.com ]

[ami3810]

@Micha didn't they promise that already with the HCU? Our main websites did great with the HCU and got tanked with the Core Updates. Go figure it.

[Micha]

@ami3810 Google promises a lot, but Danny Sullivan passes on the feedback he receives to the team responsible, at least that's what he says.

Of course, I don't know what will happen, but at least we can have some hope. What other choice do we have? Right now we have to watch our websites go down, and no one can bear that frustration for long, especially when their livelihood depends on it. And I for one would rather focus on my content than have to constantly worry about Google's crap.

By the way, I don't have to figure your situation, I feel the same way. And I'm at a loss as to what I can do. That's something I don't like at all.

[adman]

Danny Sullivan writes on X that many improvements are on the way

What we need is predictability, not uncertainty.
Nobody knows what to hope for and what to fear of.
Investment will go only where environment is safe and predictable, to certain degree.
No one will go where the laws change every month.

[Micha]

What we need is predictability, not uncertainty.

Basically I agree with you, but Google and predictability have always been mutually exclusive. It's the worst, but not the first rollercoaster ride we've experienced with Google.

[markmaster]

Rollercoaster ride describes my last two weeks

[honestman]

@adman
There has not been much certainty with G for at least 10 of the 20 years I have observed them.
But just like the stock market you referenced in this context, investors (our time as webmasters/SEOs/Gurus, etc.) need some sense of the predictable.
I have never, ever seen things spin so out of control such that it is as if AI has so entered the algorithm equation that it is hallucinating while still maintaining strong biases for the big fish and some scrapers (I always ignore scrapers, as they come and go like the infinite spam out there that AI may both ignore and propagate at once at warp speed).
You can analyze all the tech, speculate on the new parameters using all the jargon we are fed, etc., but in the end, we are at the mercy of programmers who may or may not be given coherent guidance as things spin out of control. As a former programmer/consultant, I know that the more programmers, generally the worse the results, and most projects are political and not implemented on their merits.