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]

[mhansen]

The current environment is only profitable for those who pump Google's index full of massive quantities of auto-generated/AI spam.

I'd go a step farther and add that those doing this are immune to Google updates due to their domain authority. (Forbes, etc) In my neck of the web, some of the industries leaders, those who sponsor major sports franchises and have commercials running regularly on TV, have also seen a huge decline in relevance for generic, though topically related content. (One leader going from +8m visibility to -800k since HCU)

In SGE news, I now see local service companies being generated in its output and leading to GMB pages.

[christianz]

Weakness in traffic starting with yesterday. Across all my sites.

[ichthyous]

I dont know...You see the first half of the day very weak, then a drop down to zero. Then a huge surge the 2nd half of the day making up all of the difference. Today, very strong traffic to start the day like I haven't seen in weeks. New inquiries since 2nd half of the day as well. It's really drastic swings these days, with shorter and shorter periods of decent traffic.

[Fluff_Nutz]

My website is now at +40% and has been on the increase since Tuesday. No idea why. It could be due to newly added content or, as someone mentioned, the removals of some of the G spam ads. I, in truth, haven't been following the G spam as I usually work from desktop and, apparently, the mess is mostly seen on cell/mobile devices. But its nice to see a brief increase, yes brief knowing Google. Unfortunately.

I think the only way to survive the G SERPs now is to either be a millionaire with enough money to burn into websites or to just spam AI. The latter of which I still find difficult to accept. AI is regurgitated rubbish spun from other legit articles. It is your basic copy pasting.

I really dislike AI being brought into our lives. Its dangerous and it ruins businesses. Not just websites but movies too, as many of us have been made aware of through various news medias throughout the year. A lot of this cancelled events that I often visit due to actor strikes and other such AI related issues. It ruins businesses and makes people lazy. As AI is easier and makes the basic essential tool so much easier to use and take advantage of. A world full of lazy people and ultimately a lazy society. Great! Just what we all need. What is the point of the human race if we cannot function and do anything for ourselves?

[Razorllama]

Huge volatility for my keywords, talking about bouncing between position 3-20, dropping and re-appearing etc. Out of 150 tracked keywords, 100 have been experiencing this volatility over the past 3 days.

[ubound]

My traffic always drops somewhere between December 10 and 15, and this year is no exception. I usually don't check the stats until January 7 from here to avoid driving myself crazy.

[Mark_A]

Organic is providing a much greater percentage of our traffic at the moment, not because it has grown, rather because we have taken a hatchet to wasteful broad match ads.

[Micha]

And the ranking falls again. You can really do what you want, it just doesn't change anything. In the past few days it went up a bit, but since yesterday it has been in free fall.

[renatovieira]

Same here. Yesterday huge drop. It looks like it's going to be even bigger today...

[Conro]

I think that Google has completely relied on its artificial intelligence and now it is unable to manage it. Come on, the search can’t be that bad. Instead of penalizing new sites that create thousands of articles in a short period of time, penalize sites that have grown naturally over years of activity. This is crazy considering everything it has put on the first page, including ads, YouTube, people also asked, people also searched, Google community, etc. It’s like the organic search now starts on the second page

[RedBar]

My traffic always drops somewhere between December 10 and 15, and this year is no exception.

Likewise for me, much of my western global industry closes for a full 2 weeks this evening until 2/3 January. My factories in China and India work completely to their normal schedules and know how to contact me should anything be urgent.

I had to check my UK hotel traffic volume since that too has reduced however it is totallly in-line with previous valid years. The actual business trade is fine, all the "speculative" business bookings etc is mostly done.

I'm currently moving servers for the first time in 10 years, oh fun and joy this is!

[EditorialGuy]

My traffic always drops somewhere between December 10 and 15, and this year is no exception.

Our editorial travel-planning site's low point for the year is usually in early to mid-December, but that doesn't explain the roughly 50 percent year-over-year drop that I'm seeing right now.

[renatovieira]

Is anyone else noticing a huge drop today?

[Fluff_Nutz]

Traffic drop here. Started yesterday after a nice 2 days traffic increase, I am now -35%.

[Conro]

80% of sites have a drop of traffic. Do you realize that now only big and already very wealthy sites selected by Google are making much, much more money than before? Search has become only for the rich. Google has become a reverse Robin Hood

[ichthyous]

Is anyone else noticing a huge drop today?

Yes, USA is - 46% and Canada -58% at 11:45am

[RedBar]

Is anyone else noticing a huge drop today?

It is totally and utterly bizarre ... I am having the most normal of days, consistently good global traffic and all with multi page views, the sort of traffic I used to have until about a year or so ago, no peaks, no troughs, it's been like this for the past 17 hours.

[l1fejosh]

Had some okay traffic this morning, but completely dropped off as of this afternoon...

[mhansen]

Is anyone else noticing a huge drop today?

ScarlettJohanssanmeme: You guys still get traffic?.

[sk7411]

Huge Drop today, I have noticed they usually do major tweaks on fridays .

[ami3810]

New day - new crazy at G. Was searching for some supplements and how they affect a certain medical condition and the SERP has gone from bad to worse to just... lol.

#1 Amazon with a customer's review (the product about which said review is, is even out of stock!) - the review could even be considered dangerous, as it claims only positive benefits of said supplement; to be honest, sounds a lot like an over-exaggerated sells-pitch. This in reality is wrong as the supplement can cause the opposite effect to one's health!
#2 - some nobody without any obvious expertise in either field (nutrition or medicine) - no author profile - no company info, nada.
#3 - looks like some esoteric website without much authority either, certainly not seeing any medical accreditations or expertise anywhere
#4 - FINALLY - an actual trustworthy and authoritative website

HCU my a**. Whatever those updates are doing, it is the opposite of making the SERPs helpful.

[Micha]

So this is new: From 5 p.m., Google's traffic increased extremely sharply and currently remains so. Normally, traffic always flattens out in the evening.

[RedBar]

no peaks, no troughs, it's been like this for the past 17 hours.

And right on cue as soon as I wrote that ... it died ... Doh!

[christianz]

Traffic for my main / large / old site is pancake flat for 3 weeks. Fingers crossed, knock on wood it stays that way. But it's wishful thinking.

My other site continues to tank, today quite badly too.

I think my main site barely made it through the HCU massacre and is holding on by a thread, still near all time high traffic levels. However, it is losing top 3 keywords every day, some of them going down to 4-10 category, hence why overall traffic is barely holding on and not collapsing yet.

Early November was about winners and losers for me. December is about losers and not-losers. Nothing is gaining. Staying flat feels like winning. On the background of unprecedented de-ranking of most small publishers.

[EditorialGuy]

We had our best day (year over year) in several weeks, but only by a little, and mostly because of one page that occasionally jumps to the top from out of nowhere. We don't even benefit from that page, because it's on a topic that advertisers tend to shun.

[System]

The following message was cut out to new thread by engine. New thread at: google/5098896.htm [webmasterworld.com]
9:46 am on Dec 16, 2023 (utc 0)

[Razorllama]

Fluctuations still continue, I'm seeing drops, recoveries, and drops again on a scale that's befitting a full-blown core update. Talking about 8+ position fluctuations, with some keywords going back pages and returning. Yesterday it was 60% of my total tracked keywords, today it's 90% of them.

[haramamba]

In addition to PAA and Related searches, we have 2 new sh*t sections now - "Discussions and forums" and "Perspectives"...

[EricAN]

New member here, so Hello!

Sweden - November and month before visitors increased. Nov 25 a major drop -50%. Even worse now in dec. Strange is that not all pages are affected more than -1 in serp. Some pages pends from -8 to -40 in serp. My name as an author have gone down -2 to -3.

It seems like G makes way less traffic to my "money pages" = informational landing pages in some subjects that carefully points to products or services. These pages are amongst the best out there with hard to find information and very unique, well structured with 9000-12000 words long content. Can now see pages above in serp that has not so great information at all.

There are comment fields in all pages, if this can have something to do with this fluctuation?

Am not sure about what G now is doing. Have been out there with white hat seo for up to 20 years now. Very low grade of parasitic seo, just news and links at private and company FB, Linkedin and X. The site I´m working on now is soon 2 years old.

What is G doing and why?

[Micha]

@EricAN Welcome to the forum

What is G doing and why?

This is the question we all ask ourselves and which nobody can explain.

[christianz]

What is G doing and why?

They are engaging in dairy farming. Milking the web.

Why? Because its profitable, judging by Google's financial results.

[renatovieira]

One more day, huge drop today...

[ChokenBako]

Here also - 50 % down since End of November... Today again huge drop... Visibility decreases according to Semrush.

[doc_z]

It seems that Google uses an AI to judge which site is helpful and then uses an AI to find similar pages to the nonhelpful pages and penalize them too. The problem is that the result is black and white, while the real world has at least fifty shades of grey.

In addition, Google is not interested in whether the determination of the nonhelpful pages was correct or whether the pages have been changed in the meantime.

There's a KI on the rampage
Don't feel no fear
(KI = AI in German)

[BlueEyes82]

One site from 1,5 sistrix points since September to 0,27 today - soon it won't go any deeper. We changed a lot for EAT. The competitors who lost also and do nothing - the result is the same (drop down). Anyone who has lost since September continues to lose...you can turn the page upside down...I can do nothing.

The results get worse with every update. A page not updated since 2013 + no mobile version ranks better and better - #1 for some keywords + sitlinks - no comment...

[Micha]

Since yesterday evening at 6 pm an article (6 weeks old, not unique, rather a side note, therefore very short) has been going off like a suppository. Today at 12 noon until 6 pm the usual normal traffic was back, since 6 pm the same article has been really taking off again on Google. That's completely illogical ...

[ichthyous]

Looks like another update rolling out. Traffic suddenly lower

Another sudden drop from numerous visitors to zero within one hour on my site. This seems to be the new norm...traffic goes normally until about 10am and then suddenly drops to zero and stays very low for a few hours. Could be that people are out and about but this is a highly exaggerated pattern of steep drops.

In my opinion this has nothing to do with updates anymore, we are simply the lab rats in a constantly self-teaching algorithm that is studying how to best extract all converting traffic and shunt it to google's ads. This is the new normal.

[EditorialGuy]

Our pageviews were up 9 percent today (compared to the same day last week) but were still down 44 percent from last year. We've had a couple of days of slight improvement, which isn't saying much even in this era of diminished expectations.

[superclown2]

Our editorial travel-planning site's low point for the year is usually in early to mid-December, but that doesn't explain the roughly 50 percent year-over-year drop that I'm seeing right now.

Read through how Google have admitted to manipulating search results to favour their own profits and look at the hardly believable mass of ads and googlespam in the search results and the explanation will become clear.

[Conro]

First 6 positions:
1 Featured snippet
2 People also ask
3 site organic
4 Related searches
5 site organic
6 Related searches

For googler is the quality problem. I'm sure the Googler have a big problem. Very big.

[christianz]

Here's an idea for Google execs. How about remove the remaining few organics completely and just leave the "People also ask" and "Related searches" only?

Yes, you would not be able to find any answers, but that's not really the end of the world - answers are not always necessary.

The main feature would be finding out what other people want to know and are interested in. Plus see cool and relevant ads.

[Conro]

@christianz people also ask and related searches are a good system for instruct the AI (paa) and for click on ads (related search). But this have a price: all the sites below this widgets lost traffic

[RubicCubed]

people also ask and related searches are a good system for instruct the AI (paa) and for click on ads (related search).

Google calls these "refinements" to boost the number of queries, to push users out of organic results and back to the top of the page where they are smacked with many ads to click as you specified. These refinements are an ugly and corrupt b@stardization of the serps if you ask me.

[Conro]

They could also use ‘related searches’ and ‘people also ask’ in the SERP, but at least after the tenth position, otherwise they get too much traffic. Same thing for YouTube videos

[RubicCubed]

They could also use ‘related searches’ and ‘people also ask’ in the SERP, but at least after the tenth position, otherwise they get too much traffic.

The purpose of refinements is for Google to direct users out of organic results, where Google doesn't make any money, and back into a new query/screen full of ads.

[samwest]

Another 25-year low for November. 'Googlespam' just keeps getting worse. Time to tear that deceptive, sneaky, smoke and mirrors ad spam monopoly apart. Sorry for the sugar coating... ;)

[ichthyous]

Traffic is all over the place...it's tending to be **very** slow the first part of the day and then suddenly catch up the rest of the day. Traffic is far below normal today at 1:30pm though, -31% USA, -21% UK, -40% UAE. I have had certain sections of my site totally demolished since November 10th and no sign of improvement. Google is once again steadily dropping top 3/10 terms day after day...drip, drip, drip...Soon I will be at a 20% loss of all my top terms. This doesn't freak me out, it has happened numerous times...in March the same thing happened and I lost a wide swath of terms, and then in August I started gaining terms rapidly, and now losing them all again. It's clearly cyclical and based on which types of sites google is currently pushing. Business is going to be much slower 1st half of 2024 if this keeps up though...

[Micha]

What I ask myself is, what does Google actually want? I mean, we all have websites from different industries, we all struggle. What exactly is actually working? (and I don't mean AI spam now)

[renatovieira]

Here today is much better than the last 10 days. I notice a significant increase now in the afternoon, after a very slow morning. Just like good days. This will certainly not continue. Either way, it looks like something is going on... Something has been turned on, or turned off ;-)

[EditorialGuy]

What exactly is actually working? (and I don't mean AI spam now)

For us, it's mostly the same pages that have worked for years, albeit with regular updating. New pages take a long time to rise to the top, if they ever do.