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]

[ichthyous]

I always see a lot of people on here say they have lost 70% (or thereabouts) of traffic with mostly all updates, surly you must be at -100% traffic by now? Its odd its pretty much always "I lost 70% of traffic".

Good point...I base my percentages on the difference from the last four of the same day of the week. So for example the difference between this Tuesday compared to the previous four Tuesdays.

Having said that, I am losing 2-3 top 3 and top 10 terms per day now like clockwork. I have had almost six months of gains wiped away, and from the current trend, it will very soon be one year of gains wiped away. It's not time for panic yet though, the same thing happened in reverse starting six months ago when my site started to push upward gaining terms for months without stopping. That is just the new normal...

Glad some of you are finding success with Youtube...I have been posting more YouTube shorts but haven't dived into long form content yet...it's a lot of work.

[l1fejosh]

Gained some of our positions back but traffic is nearly non-existent.

[ichthyous]

Search traffic is down 36% today...USA is -48% and UK is -23%. This is far below a typical Wed traffic, but on par with the same day last year. The only problem there is that I have a lot more content on the site than I did last year at this time, so in actuality this level of traffic is far worse than last year. Or is that not a valid comparison?

[EditorialGuy]

Our week-over-week traffic is continuing to climb, but I suspect this has more to do with seasonal variations than anything Google is doing. (We usually reach our lowest point of the year in early to mid-December or thereabouts).

One thing that always leaves me confused is the "average position" number in Google Search Console. Does it have any practical meaning if most of your traffic comes from a few major subtopics rather than from topics and positions across the board?

[l1fejosh]

One thing that always leaves me confused is the "average position" number in Google Search Console. Does it have any practical meaning if most of your traffic comes from a few major subtopics rather than from topics and positions across the board?

The average positioning on GSC is where you land on the SERPs each time your website appears on the user screen.

For example, if 3 users searched for keywords and you came up on position 4, 10 and 5 - your average position would be: 6.33.

[Conro]

Today I don’t read complaints so either everything is fine or someone has given up.

[Soulofmonk]

People are on Holidays

[RubicCubed]

Today I don’t read complaints so either everything is fine or someone has given up.

More likely people are entering holiday mode and spending less time working in front of a computer screen.

[Micha]

Everything is fine, definitely not. I've decided to end the year in peace now, too much stress isn't good and nothing will change anyway. The problems will definitely still be there in the new year.

[oldog]

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.

[status.search.google.com...]

[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 ]

www.searchenginejournal.com Google Search Overwhelmed By Massive Spam Attack Google is apparently struggling to contain a spam attack that's been ongoing for days

[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!