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]

[Micha]

According to X, many sites from the EU are affected, I'm curious to see if anything changes when it's fixed.

[EditorialGuy]

New Update folks
Google is investigating reports about delayed indexing in Google Search that's affecting a small number of sites. We're working on identifying the root cause. Next update will be within 12 hours.

I think the "next update" refers to Google's reporting about the indexing issue, as opposed to a Google Search update.

[Conro]

Browsing through the websites I know to better understand how things are going for them, I discover that a technology site with over 10 years of activity, really well-made and that has always had a significant amount of traffic, has experienced a 71% decrease in visits in the last 3 months. It still has a lot of traffic, but much less than before these seemingly pointless Google updates. This is another demonstration that Google has no clue about recognizing a quality site with useful content. It seems that this has now become the norm, and it appears impossible to recover. In the end, what will remain in the search engine results pages
if everything good gets deindexed or pushed down? It seems that Google is now struggling with a massive spam of websites with newly registered domains and is unable to handle the situation. This is because it penalized good sites; otherwise, spam sites wouldn't have easily risen to the top.

[armoured]

I work for one of the "big sites" people are complaining about and it's impacting other big sites too who I know people at.

It's almost like Google are jumbling up the search results with a random number generator and if you happen to get picked to show up on page 1 then you've had a good day.

[Micha]

@armoured I'll just get the pitchfork, please wait a minute ;-).

By the way, I can recommend this article on the subject of spam, it seems that Google no longer has its algorithm under control.
[searchenginejournal.com ]

[RedBar]

As expected my global traffic has been reducing but, as yet, not by as much as predicted however the next 4/5 days, usually, sees a dearth of visitors.

My UK sites have had a much lower traffic week than anticipated. The hotel site in particular has seen a halving this week yet the bar and restaurant takings are up considerably, the accommodation is always low at this time.

[Conro]

@Micha
I was referring to this in my previous post. Moreover, these spam domains with recently created domains that spam everywhere have been around since before June, but it seems that now they have increased even more, and Google is no longer able to handle them, or perhaps it had never done anything to manage them. If Google had not penalized 80% of the sites, these domains would not worry anyone. Google is now self-destructing, and yet it would be enough to monitor new sites more than old ones, as it is the new sites that spam and use AI without control, while older sites generally do not pose a risk. The new domains then publish thousands or millions of pages within a few days of their registration, and this alone should be a reason for manual scrutiny, but perhaps it is too difficult for Google team to understand.

[superclown2]

This is another demonstration that Google has no clue about recognizing a quality site with useful content

Their 'secret ranking sauce' has just been, largely, an illusion from the start.

According to internal documents released during the trial (I really recommend reading them thoroughly), Google is unable to tell good content from bad. This is why they rely so much on user interactions and the popularity of sites.

So; well known brands or heavy advertisers are able to scoop up so much business, despite often having little expertise in the subjects that are written about. The only way for new, small fry to rank is to have an offering that is fairly unique, a difficult proposition in these days of intense competition aided by AI.

It's simple really.

[Conro]

Continuing like this, however, no one will remain in the search engine results page except for "people have also asked" and "people have also searched" YouTube videos. If Google wants to eliminate all websites, why doesn't it just say so? Everyone has understood that the usefulness of content has nothing to do with it, as many excellent sites are losing traffic day after day.

[Micha]

I don't think Google itself knows what it actually wants to be, a door opener or a service provider that competes with us. Also, the user should actually come first, followed by us content creators and then Google, but now we creators are at the bottom of the list and Google just sees us as a self-service store. We are all feeling the effects, our websites are slowly dying and our content is being sucked up.

But I think now is the time to clear our heads a little. On that note, I wish you all a peaceful Christmas, don't waste the holidays thinking about Google, SEO and the like.

[BigKat]

According to internal documents released during the trial (I really recommend reading them thoroughly), Google is unable to tell good content from bad.

In the court documents I've read, Google specifically talked about turning off ranking improvements to boost queries. I don't think it's that Google can't determine good content from bad as much as it is displaying good search results is not profitable for them. If a user goes to a search engine and quickly finds what they want and leaves, then Google loses money. That's why Google is generating low quality search results; to keep users on Google longer, generating more queries and looking at more ads.

[Conro]

You are right, in fact from tomorrow I will take 4 days of vacation, since I have been thinking about negative things lately. Better to disconnect. Happy holidays to everyone.

[armoured]

My prediction: there will be a course correction either from now or early next year.

[ichthyous]

Impressions and clicks in GSC have declined in a continuous downward trend since November 8th. I have lost most of the increases for 2023 and at this point I will be sinking back to 2022 levels if it continues to decline at this pace.

I have lost about 15-18% of my top 3/10 terms, but most of them were the lower traffic volume terms. I am holding up well in the most important high volume terms, but some of them no longer refer any traffic.

Traffic for several terms that were referring huge amounts of traffic has declined 85%+ since 11/8...that's while my ranking has increased for those same terms to #2 / #3! From what I am seeing it is really all about the huge image carousels...once google strips your listing of those you simply lose all the traffic and the business.

[Dooku]

By the way, I can recommend this article on the subject of spam

I already mentioned this a few times in my posts how people now chrun out massive amounts of sh|t using chatgpt and or combination of multiple AI "article writer software.
We are now finally seeing the effects and the result of this spam is obviously larger than even google can handle.

It's going to be interesting in 2024. Because either google has to find a solution instead of figtiing the symptoms......or this will become a totallt out of control problem. Even to the point that their adwords operation will become totally useless ......an then finally google itself :-)

[BlueEyes82]

@Dooku If that's the case, it's bad that Google itself can't even separate new and old content (before Chatgpt). The large number of posts were there before the introduction and are also penalized by Google, although some of the content was crawled years ago and there may have been a few small updates.

When I see sites that have won, in addition to brand, there are only 0-8-15 websites without a design overview and with slapped-on content. So visually from 2013. The only pages that have peaks for me after the update are pages that I haven't touched for 3 (!) years and have a purely modular system - visually anything but appealing.

I would have to significantly degrade my currently maintained pages to get to such a low level, but that's not an option for me.

[Shepherd]

spam is obviously larger than even google can handle

It's larger than any of us can handle. Starting this year we are literally spending the majority of our resources fighting spammers/hackers. Been online commercially since 1997 and this is the worst it's ever been. Sad really.

[nova88]

Hello, a few months ago I bought a small inexpensive travel and world discovery blog, and even if it is a recent site the indexing is very fast and many articles are in the top 10 of google but unfortunately not much traffic? Do you have any tips on how to increase travel blog traffic?

[RubicCubed]

spam is obviously larger than even google can handle

The only spam hurting us is Google's own ad and widget spam. Four ads followed by the PAA widget means few ever see the first organic result at all.

[renatovieira]

HUGE drop today!

[Bloggerist]

Experienced another 50% drop from Dec 19th and still ongoing. Similar to HCU or worse. Who else is seeing such levels of traffic decline?

[RedBar]

Traffic levels as expected across several sites at between 20% to 50% of average depending upon the widget subject. I expect this much volatility until at least 3rd January. There are usually a couple of totally unpredictable up days, I would guess the 27/28/29th.

[christianz]

Drop today versus good traffic yesterday. Typical Google BS.

[onweb23]

Hi all, I'm a new user but a long-time reader of this forum. Like most of you, I'm affected by the downturn in traffic from Google on my 17+ year-old website. My website is a blog-like site that has about 20 tag pages. These tag pages never got traffic from search engines, only users on the site used them to navigate the page. But starting from Dec. 13, the tag pages started receiving a noticeable amount of search engine traffic from Google and now are even under the top traffic pages. Does anyone else notice such behavior? I wonder what the reason could be, is Google maybe evaluating internal links differently now and as these tag pages receive many internal links, they started ranking?

[jchiff]

Frequent lurker / seldom contributor here.

Just thought I would add my results from this no good very stange update.

We run a 25 year-old sports & entertainment info site. Hints of a very slow recovery have been consistent within the past two weeks. Morning hours begin very slowly until afternoon when visitor numbers begin to zoom -- only to fall off again by evening.

With that, strong seasonal pages continue to do relatively well while all else goes completely off the radar. And, overall, earnings have consistently dropped to - 47 percent under last year.

My two cents. (No pun intended.) Meanwhile, here's to the new year and to all the survivors who will recover from another stormy December. Cheers.

[ichthyous]

@renatovieira Your huge drops always worry me. Lately some of my top terms have been recovering slightly. Today was stronger traffic than I expected for a Saturday on Christmas weekend. Hopefully not more huge drops. All of November and December were basically a write off for me in terms of business. There were some inquiries, but not like before Nov. 8th, and nobody purchased a thing...people are acting like a recession is here and it's not.

[RedBar]

So far not as low as expected with most sites averaging 50% with my global site seeing its usual Asian and ME visitors with the USA -66%. Altogether, for me, I feel it may be a week of "fluctuations".

[ichthyous]

Traffic seems on par with end of the year 2022, but that's actually a huge loss for me...I am continuing to lose all of my top 3 and top 10 terms in a relentless slow drip. I have more content and had much higher traffic in 2023 than I did in 2022, so not a great sign for 2024 to return to 2022 levels.

Is anyone else seeing a slow loss of all their top ranking terms starting around 8th November?

[ggpaul]

Hi all,

Well - I just got back from our 3-4 day vacation. And I saw on our end too, avg positions dropped by 2 (from 10 to 12) for our product listing pages.. Steep drop going to Dec 24th. This is a very large e-commerce site (high end fashion) by the way.

Sigh.

[ggpaul]

Looks like I regained some positions back (looking at most recent in GSC. GSC just updated).

[EditorialGuy]

Our UVs were up 5 percent today (compared to last Tuesday), and pageviews were up 13 percent.

Average positions also crept up, but I suspect that the main reason for our increase in traffic was the usual post-Christmas bounce. (Our topic is travel, and we always see a traffic boost toward the end of the year. We're still down more than 50 percent from the same time in 2022.)

[BlueEyes82]

So basically “things continue” like the last few weeks.

Anyone who has lost since the HCU update continues to lose...no website can reverse the trend through changes or no changes. Google also seems to be sticking to its new "recipe" despite the poor quality

[EditorialGuy]

Google also seems to be sticking to its new "recipe" despite the poor quality

Or maybe Googlers are off visiting relatives, skiing, or soaking up the sun in Hawaii. The last two weeks of the year are quiet time at a lot of companies.

[Broaster]

This is depressing, no matter how many articles I put up, I get no traffic. Ill get tops 8 visits an hour to my website its been like this for the last 3 months. No traffic from bing or yahoo either. It seems like all the same websites are getting the Top Stories spots too. I see the same sites like Marca, Sportskeeda and Essentially Sports and a few others and they even beat up some real well known news sites.

I wonder if they have connections with Indian google employees who hook them up with the placements?

[Micha]

Could it be that another update is in the works? Things have improved a bit for me over the holidays. It's still not great, but at least there has been an average of 15 percent more visitors in the last few days. However, Discover's traffic has been completely dead for days now.

@Broaster The fact that a handful of websites dominate in each area seems to be the norm at the moment. In my subject area, three websites now dominate the stock market websites, surpassing even the leading media outlets.

[RedBar]

On the 26h my global site ended up at a surprising 87% with the USA -12% but the UK +300%! For decades now the Xmas / New Year holidays deliver "interesting" metrics.

Could it be that another update is in the works?

Something has definitely changed for a couple of my sites, whether it's a re-ranking or yet another "update" I have no idea as yet.

[Fluff_Nutz]

Main Site:
December 25th: +12%
December 26th: -12%

Newer Site:
December 25th: +6%
December 26th: -25%

So as you can see December 25th was a great day for both my sites. With minor improvements in traffic. However, it also reverted and dropped yesterday (Dec 26th). So either people are going back to work now or, yes, another change is being made.

Meanwhile my Youtube channel sees some nice growth which continues even through December 26th. This is basically a dead month for the channel so I'm happy and pleased to see any kind of growth for it. I'll also add that neither website has had any new articles since early December. I mainly focus on Youtube now with G and their instability. Even when new articles are being added the site still drops. As I witnessed during the HCU.

[EditorialGuy]

Our UVs today were up 26 percent over last Wednesday, and pageviews were up 30 percent. Still down about 50 percent from the same day last year, though.

[Conro]

Bing have remove from serp "people also ask". Google instead continues to move the paa higher and higher, in first place under the featured snippet. Out of 10 organic results on Google there are 1 paa among the top 3 positions and 2 related searches. Bing always better, while google is getting worse and worse

[superclown2]

Bing always better, while google is getting worse and worse

Sorry but I disagree about Bing being better. Their search results are a jumbled mess with hidden ads and many tactics copied from googlespam. I often wonder why legislators let them get away with those tiny, hardly visible 'ad' boxes.

My own results have shown a slight uptick in business from Bing when the their AI was first launched but they have fallen back month by month and are now, again, less than 2% of my total. Duck (which is a far better search engine than Google in my opinion) is still producing less than 1%. Default doesn't talk it swears.

Google's results are dreadful though, compared to what they used to be, thanks to their seemingly deliberate policy of degrading them in order to force more clicks on ads, which their results as we all know are packed with. They can do this thanks to their ownership of Chrome and Android, and stripping them of these (which Europe wants to do) would be the only way of taming them.

[Conro]

@superclown2 I am using Bing for Italian search and I do not see unclear or hidden ads, I recognize them quite clearly and the ads are much less than those of Google. Bing, however, should remove that gray from mobile that makes the interface look old, the background should be left all white in my opinion. Duck Duck Go has good results but is too focused on blocking anything for privacy, for example it has an active adblock that would not show the ads of blogs and without advertising revenue a site that lives on advertising dies. Duck Duck Go is too extreme and does not think about the life of a site.

[Treud]

I have a huge increase (20%, yes huge :D) since 2 days as well, the CTR is stable, but the impressions doubled. So Google must be changing something.

[Micha]

The upswing seems to be over again, but that won't surprise anyone.

What do you think things will look like in 2024?

[superclown2]

What do you think things will look like in 2024?

I think there will be big changes. Google is rumoured to be 're-assessing' some 30,000 jobs on the sales team (they haven't mentioned layoffs yet but if they do morale should hit rock bottom) and whilst I'm not convinced that American legislators will achieve much in taming Google in the medium term I've had a look at the UK CMA regulations which will affect them soon (no I didn't read all 400+ pages!) and if I was a Google employee I would be severely worried. Our regulators don't take prisoners and some of the practices that were exposed in the trial will get G into deep trouble if UK businesses are affected by them in the future. Also the European DMA will affect them and the Europeans have a track record of levying the sort of fines that make even Google executives take notice.

I also predict that AI will have little to no effect on search. After all, when Bing's foray into it has been so ineffective why should Google drop the present highly profitable results (read: ads) display?

It will be an interesting year.

[RubicCubed]

What do you think things will look like in 2024?

I see chat boxes on major SEs surrounded by ads with minuscule or well hidden organic (free) links to those sites where these SE chat boxes scraped some of their responses from. With little to no traffic going to websites, they will be starved of revenue to continue maintaining their sites and a barren wasteland will be left behind.

How's that for a positive view on the state of Google in 2024?

[Micha]

@superclown2 I don't think AI search will be relevant next year, but I do think AI will cause more problems for website owners. You can already see it now, Google's AI rating for the quality of websites doesn't work at all. I also believe that Google will continue like this and more and more websites, especially the small specialized ones, will disappear. Google will remain the dominant search engine in 2024.

I therefore fear that what we are currently experiencing will not change much next year.

[Shepherd]

rumoured to be 're-assessing' some 30,000 jobs on the sales team

There's no shortage of things google should be "re-assessing"...

[RedBar]

@Conro

Duck Duck Go is too extreme and does not think about the life of a site.

Please clarify, what do you mean by this statement? I've used DDG for many years and especially so on mobile and I believe it still takes most of its feed from Bing with a bit mixed-in from other engines.

Commercially I actually rank better on Google than DDG however DDG's layout / appearance, especially on mobile, wins hands down plus for factual searches, for which I do a lot, G / B / DDG deliver very similar results.

[Conro]

@RedBar I have already explained that Duck Duck Go is solely focused on the user, it blocks tracking and does not display advertisements from websites. A site that lives off advertising dies with Duck Duck Go, and it’s also not good for an ecommerce site. Duck Duck Go is fine if you are a user who wants to maximize privacy and doesn’t care if websites live or die. However, Duck Duck Go does sell its own advertising, and with that, I’ve said it all.

[RedBar]

@Conro ... Therefore is it your comtention that those who do not wish to see advertising should be forced into accepting adverts? That no one should have the right to blocks ads simply to commercialise The Net as an advertising medium, which G is already doing, that users have no freedom of choice?

Or have I misunderstood you?