December 2023 Google Search Observations

[Martin Ice Web]

After 3 very good weeks we see a 50% drop for all sites we manage started right at midnight. Seems google started Xmas shopping revenue season.

[edited by: not2easy at 11:39 am (utc) on Dec 1, 2023]
[edit reason] split cleanup - New month, new thread [/edit]

[Conro]

@RedBar Duck Duck Go and for clarity I mean the browser is already set to block advertising on all sites. If you want to see the ads you have to unlock the ads. How many would do it if DDG was the most used browser? For me nobody

[ichthyous]

Anyone who thinks that AI isn't going to come crashing through our businesses and our traffic in 2024 is simply being naive. AI has been ordained as the future and the 'next great thing' and you have every tech behemoth in North America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East all rushing at breakneck pace to develop it and convert the entire world economy to depend on AI.

They have the means to do it because the only power on earth that can rein it in and place checks on the process, the US government, has abdicated its responsibility years ago and is now a hollowed out shell that serves to rubber stamp corporate interests since the minute Reagan took over in 1980. It's not about to change any time soon since corporations and all kinds of entities (even nation states) have flooded the US political system with cash. The tech industry cannot be stopped, even if it is determined to destroy most people's job security and well being just to benefit the very small group of people who stand to make trillions of dollars during this process. It will literally take a revolution in order to impose any kind of restraints on these companies.

[superclown2]

it has an active adblock that would not show the ads of blogs and without advertising revenue a site that lives on advertising dies

The days of putting up a blog and plastering it with ads is long gone. Personally I'm sick to the back teeth with ads, I see them everywhere I turn.

My sites sell certain products and services and no ad blockers will ever stop this. It just takes the right hard coding and deals with merchants.

[Conro]

@superclown2 Nobody likes ads, but it’s the only way to keep offering a good product for free.

[superclown2]

the only power on earth that can rein it in and place checks on the process, the US government, has abdicated its responsibility years ago and is now a hollowed out shell that serves to rubber stamp corporate interests since the minute Reagan took over in 1980

America isn't the only country on earth :-). There was a major summit at Bletchley Park here in the UK in November with senior representatives and industry leaders from around 30 countries and they discussed ways of controlling it.

The fact is: most politicians don't understand it, and they fear it.

However, market forces might have more effect. The New York Times has joined the growing list of businesses suing AI companies for copyright infringement - and they are talking billions. [abc.net.au ]

www.abc.net.au 'The cost to society will be enormous': Here's why the New York Times has just sued two tech titans The New York Times is taking legal action against Microsoft and OpenAI over their artificial intelligence-powered programs. This is what it alleges the chatbots are up to.

[Micha]

@Superclown2 And how are you supposed to survive as a news site, for example? paywall for all articles would be the only option, but nobody can afford that.

Too much ads is not necessary, but if you only rely on Adsense and the like, you usually get very little money per banner space, especially now that most websites are crashing.

@ichthyous Well, the technology is not fully developed, as many examples show. I believe, or rather I hope, that companies are not so stupid as to throw immature technology onto the market and rely mainly on it. It may be the "hot #*$!" at the moment, but we've had that before and some things turned out to be "air numbers" after a short or long time.

And even if Google practically gets away with its content theft now, at the latest when traffic really collapses, even more publishers won't put up with it, and I don't mean small ones like mine, but big players.

[superclown2]

Superclown2 And how are you supposed to survive as a news site, for example? paywall for all articles would be the only option, but nobody can afford that.

I create websites with in-depth information about particular products or services and I provide links to merchants who sell them. No ads, just 'get more information here' type text or button links using a personalised URL (definitely not the typical ones you get from TD or CJ; easily spotted). It's served me well for almost a quarter of a century.

Sure it means you have to get out and talk to people and set up deals with them but that's the way business has been conducted for centuries.

[Conro]

@superclown2 this is affiliate marketing

[EditorialGuy]

@superclown2 this is affiliate marketing

Which is a form of advertising, and which can be just as annoying as display ads. "Content marketing" can be even more annoying, since it's usually masked as editorial content.

IMO, whether ads are annoying (or not) depends on how and to what extent they're used. I'd say that, with many sites, the pendulum has swung too far from "provide an acceptable reader experience" to "publish pages that consist mostly of ads with occasional blocks of editorial content as filler." This is especially true of news sites.

Speaking of news (and Google), I keep wondering when Google will turn Google News into the kind of ad-driven mess that regular Google Search has become.

[Conro]

Regarding affiliations, does anyone know how Amazon's affiliate program will behave once Chrome no longer uses cookies?

[superclown2]

@superclown2 this is affiliate marketing

What we do is a lot more complex than that, involving far closer relationships with the companies we have partnered with.

Which is a form of advertising, and which can be just as annoying as display ads. "Content marketing" can be even more annoying, since it's usually masked as editorial content.

Really? A link offering more information about complex financial instruments that cannot be summed up in a single web page (or even a single website) is more annoying than a bouncing ad for cheap widgets that takes ages to load and which you can't delete? I don't think our visitors would agree with that.

Frankly: Google hates affiliate marketing. Tiny sites may stay under the radar but bigger more successful ones that put obvious affiliate links on their site are asking for problems.

[Micha]

So no direct affiliate marketing? We do that too, but we market our advertising space ourselves. I think a healthy mix, i.e. with only a few banner ads (and no pop-up ads) and something like that, is the right way to go.

[superclown2]

I think a healthy mix, i.e. with only a few banner ads (and no pop-up ads) and something like that, is the right way to go.

Do people still click on banner ads? They were all the rage 20 years ago but their effectiveness nosedived. Also a lot of affiliate sites insist on them loading dynamically which slows page loading down. Google, and visitors, don't like that. Then again we are in an era in which everyone seems to be using some type of CMS for their sites which slows loading times even further whereas many of us used to hand code them (we still do).

Pop-ups? I agree, an absolute no-no. It's bad enough dealing with cookie policies (another example of how legislators don't understand the Web) without adding to the clutter.

If you must use affiliate links I suggest you hide them from Google, there are plenty of ways.

[Micha]

My readers do, but I only have a few banners on the site, no cookies etc. and the banners are delivered via Revive, which is on the same server. Judging by the clicks, it works well. In addition, we market the advertising spaces ourselves and they are not charged according to clicks. I would never use Adsense and similar nonsense and we don't do affiliate advertising at all.

[EditorialGuy]

Do people still click on banner ads? They were all the rage 20 years ago but their effectiveness nosedived.

I'm pretty sure that most banner ads these days aren't direct-response ads, they're branding or messaging ads. Think "L'Oreal wll make you beautiful," as opposed to "Save 20% on L'Oreal Essence du Porc, our new pig-embryo formula." The effectiveness of such ads can't be measured directly in the form of clickthrough rates, because the purpose of the ad is to implant a message or idea (not to stimulate an immediate response).

[superclown2]

I would never use Adsense and similar nonsense

When Google first started up I made lot of money from Adsense but Google kicked me out because my click-through rate was too high (seriously!). I tried reasoning with them but it was like talking to a 20th Century robot.

So I contacted the companies whose ads had appeared on my site and fixed up deals with them. I still have an excellent working relationship with some of these guys and we all make more money because we have cut Google out of the loop. I often wonder why more Adsense publishers don't do the same.

The effectiveness of such ads can't be measured directly in the form of clickthrough rates, because the purpose of the ad is to implant a message or idea (not to stimulate an immediate response).

On the face of it that would seem to be a retrograde step since that is the way advertising worked pre-Internet, following the 80/20 rule (with 80% of it wasted). However no doubt these marketing guys know what they are doing, although I would have gone for beef or lamb, rather than pork.

However: looking through the last year's business I see Google still creating 90% of my clicks despite Bing's efforts. I have far more first page results than last year but broadly similar earnings thanks to ad packing and Googlespam. Hopefully the legislation on this side of the pond will rein them in so I can start thinking about that superyacht (well, perhaps a dinghy) again.

In the meanwhile I hope we all have a better year next year, and can look forward to the future with more optimism.

[ichthyous]

The perpetual loss of top ranking terms continues...2-3 per day. Traffic to my home page was down 72% yesterday. I'm wondering if blocking Google extended bot is part of the issue? It wouldn't be beyond reason to expect punitive measures from Google for denying it access...

[Razorllama]

A few articles have dropped out of the SERPs again, it's been a month and a half since I last saw this.

Also seeing insane volatility in my KWs, persistent since mid-December and not slowing down in any way.

[Conro]

Today new google dance

[sk7411]

Algoroo is on fire for the last two days and it perfectly aligns with our traffic pattern. A nice gain followed by a huge drop lol!

Googlers should take some day off during the new year and stop tinkering their algos.

[EditorialGuy]

Googlers should take some day off during the new year and stop tinkering their algos.

I'd rather have them tinker than leave the current mess in place.

[Micha]

@EditorialGuy Well, but when Google tinkers, there is a very high risk (95%) that the chaos will get even bigger.

[EditorialGuy]

Today new google dance

I'm not sure if I want to be on Google's dance card (it might be safer to waltz unnoticed in the background), but one statistic jumped out at me today:

According to Google Search Console, our average position for "most recent date" is 9.9, which is about 15 places higher than it had been in the wake of the most recent Google updates. (We used to average around 17, but the number had fallen to the mid-20s in the last month or so. In the past couple of days, it was around 18 or 19 before today's jump to 9.9.)

I know Google's definition of "average position," but I'm not sure how much to read into (or ignore) changes in that number. In the end, what matters is actual traffic on pages that generate revenue.

[EricAN]

I see the same.. Before 25 nov 14,2 at G search console. Then down to 18-20 and 50% lost traffic. Last days up again. Not so much traffic as before despite going up again. For a year ago it was 18-20,

[Micha]

I also took a look and can actually see an improvement in the average position. In general, all statistics show an increase, except for Matomo, because the visitor numbers show no change.

[System]

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9:24 am on Jan 2, 2024 (utc 0)