January 2024 Google Search Observations

[Micha]

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System: The following message was cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/5098123.htm [webmasterworld.com] by engine - 9:24 am on Jan 2, 2024 (utc 0)

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Happy New Year

I hope you survived New Year's Eve well and that your websites did too.

Apparently the upswing continues, I continue to see a slight improvement in the ranking and the number of readers. (on average +11.2 percent more per day at the moment).

It may be slow, but I hope it continues.

[Mark_A]

I have found a way to make google organic a much bigger proportion of our incoming traffic.

The way is simple, significantly cock up our PPC!

:)

[mosxu]

Happy New Year

I wish you all genuine traffic in 2024

[SagarSonu]

SERP is changing in every minute today. Not only for me, but for all my competitors they are jumping from position 1 to position 8th and oscillating

[mysitegothithard]

I'm seeing a very small increase in organic visits to my website. Although it's minimal compared to what I lost, it gives me hope to continue.

[GodLikeLotus]

Happy New Year to everyone.

[ichthyous]

I have lost almost all of the traffic to my home page in a rapid decline since 12/7...but especially noticeable after 12/21. Today my home page is -90%!
[ibb.co ]

My USA and UK traffic were -30% and -55% yesterday, and starting the day at -60% and -71% today. Is anyone else seeing this?

Unfortunately I think I realize the reason...I discovered that a reputable .org site that had about 600 backlinks to my site for the last decade has deleted an entire part of their site in one shot. They just deleted the entire database with no attempt to preserve any data. This has caused my site to drop like a stone due to the loss of the links.

[Dmr7]

My Google Discover traffic is 70% down since DEC 30th. ¿Anyone with the same problem?

Thank you in advance

[javelin]

Traffic crashed going into the end of Dec, now picking back up to median levels before the Dec mix up. Nothing else significant to relate other than its more educational / informational and many who research like students were on break.

[EditorialGuy]

Our traffic continues to grow: UVs today were up 19 percent over last Tuesday, and PVs were up 25 percent. "Average position" in Google Search Console has improved from the mid-20s to 9.7 in recent days.

However, we're still way down since a series of painful Google updates began in early October. (Normally Google updates barely affect our site, but our traffic plummeted during the first week of October and has only got worse since.)

[EditorialGuy]

"Average position" in Google Search Console has improved from the mid-20s to 9.7 in recent days.

And now (as of 9 hours ago) that "average position" in GSC has dropped back to the mid-20s after several days in the 9.9 to 9.7 range. Traffic seems to be about where it was a week ago, with a flattening of the upward trend that I'd been seeing in recent days.

[christianz]

AVG position is, I guess on purpose, totally useless metric. Designed to give you zero useful information.

[christianz]

I keep losing keywords, according to SemRush, and it even appears to accelerate.

However, my traffic is actually edging higher, not lower (over the past week and a half). Together with horrific RPM drop (worse than expected for early January), almost makes me wonder if part of that are bots.

Anyway, so far nothing to complain about. All time record traffic for December and November, when it really mattered.

[vlexo]

Still seeing major volatility, work on a major / large website. Like literally been good from 2022 to 2023 up until the HCU and Core Updates and then these new unverified updates in December.

What's going on? I'm still seeing spam do well for brand new sites with almost 0 links but thousands of pages and and then also just pages vanishing from the SERPs or being replaced with category pages.

In addition to all of this, we see big improvement for some areas without any actual reason for the improvement or anyway to figure out why we lost in one area vs another area which have historically always performed similarly to each other in the same category.

[EditorialGuy]

AVG position is, I guess on purpose, totally useless metric. Designed to give you zero useful information.

I don't know that metric is useless on purpose, but it does seem to be useless. Or, if it does have any benefit for site owners and SEOs, I have yet to learn what that might be.

Still, just for the sake of satisfying my curiosity, it would be interesting to know why a site might jump from the mid-20s to the 9s and then flip back the other way a week later.

[Micha]

Something is going on. The number of readers coming from Google is increasing faster and faster, although the number of keywords is falling and traffic from Discover has collapsed (or the data in the Search Console is once again incorrect).

[Alex_1729]

I keep losing keywords, according to SemRush, and it even appears to accelerate.

However, my traffic is actually edging higher, not lower (over the past week and a half).

I'm seeing something very similar for my sites as well. SEMrush showing constant drop in keywords (which is concerning), yet my traffic isn't dropping at all. I still don't like it. Semrush always knows things about my sites, and I don't trust Google in general. So I am expecting further drop, or bot traffic.

[ichthyous]

Yesterday was a reversion to the norm...search traffic was up 11% and was strong across the board, but it peaked around noon and dropped every hour after that. From the eve of Jan 2nd through the eve of Jan 3rd I received a barrage of new customer inquiries. This is now the norm with google...you get one day when Google hits the refresh button and then it tapers off and goes silent again. It looks like today is already not as strong as yesterday, but it's definitely better than the very low traffic from early December onward...we shall see what January brings in terms of stability...

[otto william]

Our indexed pages dropped 50% beginning in early December, with about 5 million pages tossed out of the index. We're thinking it's related to this, and I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced something similar: [status.search.google.com...]

[l1fejosh]

Started the new year with regaining back our lost keywords...today, traffic is nearly non-existent.

[ichthyous]

Started the new year with regaining back our lost keywords...today, traffic is nearly non-existent.

Yesterday was strong the entire day...today USA traffic vanished from 11am sharp. It is now -30% for the day. Incredible, Google intends to continue to starve us all of USA traffic in 2024 I think

[oldog]

@Otto william "Our indexed pages dropped 50% beginning in early December, with about 5 million pages tossed out of the index"
Pardon me mate....what are those 5 million pages you lost ? what useful content do they have ? or let me put it straight... Are you expecting google to index every kind of autogenerated content no matter what it is ? Because I bet those 5million pages wasn't created by humans....

[Bloggerist]

Can one do link exchanges without it affecting their site negatively?

[ichthyous]

Can one do link exchanges without it affecting their site negatively?

Who does link exchange anymore, that's a concept from circa 2005. I don't think it will hurt your site, but it won't help much either unless the IBL is from a very high ranking site.

[ichthyous]

I am still seeing a huge suppression of USA traffic compared to other regions. While UK, Europe and Australia have bounced back USA is still lagging all day. There is a very obvious on/off pattern to USA traffic now where you can see traffic freeze for hours at a time completely...traffic from the rest of the world will keep rolling in, while USA just stops. Google has total control of the flow of traffic and is loading up USA results with so many ads and other widgets that it just vanishes. Is anyone else seeing this?

[otto william]

"Are you expecting google to index every kind of autogenerated content no matter what it is ? Because I bet those 5million pages wasn't created by humans...."

Product detail pages.

[ichthyous]

"Are you expecting google to index every kind of autogenerated content no matter what it is ? Because I bet those 5million pages wasn't created by humans...."

Product detail pages.

Otto...Google generally will not index low level cookie cutter type content. If you have five million unique products #1) you must be giving amazon a run for its money, #2) those pages would each have to be made relatively unique and be linked to from the outside (and not from link farms) in order to rank or even get indexed. Did these five million product detail pages ever rank well in search, or in product search?

[otto william]

Hi Ichthyous,

Yes I agree. I think that PDPs lacking sufficient content are likely not to rank well. Why I was bringing it up is I've seen several examples, from small sites to large sites, of some sort of indexation change around Dec. 15. Some good and some bad. I'm trying to figure out if it's just a GSC thing or if G made an update that we have to take into consideration.

[saladtosser]

For years, I've observed and predicted that search engines, particularly Google, would evolve to leverage user-generated content in ways that might marginalize the original creators. This trend, which seemed evident from Google's business model, is now unfolding in real time. It appears that for many types of content, especially outside of current news, search engines no longer rely as heavily on external sources. They have amassed a vast repository of information over the years, which is now being utilized to feed advanced AI algorithms for content generation. This development has, unfortunately, rendered some traditional web content approaches less effective.

As a content creator, I believe it's crucial to adapt to these changes. Platforms like YouTube offer a more immediate connection with an audience through video content, which still has a significant window of opportunity before AI advancements begin to make a similar impact there.

I recall debates with an editorial guy, a staunch supporter of Google, who now faces challenges due to these shifts. Despite our past disagreements, I find no joy in these developments. It's a tough realization for all webmasters, regardless of their approach or 'hat' they wear – black, white, baseball, or beanie.

This situation is a stark reminder of the relentless evolution in digital content and SEO landscapes. We're witnessing a phase where large corporations capitalize on the content foundation laid by individual creators. It's a classic example of the dynamics in a capitalist system. While it's a hard pill to swallow, it's essential to recognize that the digital content ecosystem is constantly evolving, and strategies that worked years ago might not be effective today. Preparing for and adapting to these changes is key for anyone in the field of digital content creation.

[javelin]

@Bloggerist Forget doing link exchanging of any kind unless it has some real purpose ie. partners, collaboration, business ties in some way. Otherwise it is pretty pointless. Yes we still need links but G today looks at those much in the same way as "writing". It wants it to be a natural occurrence of relevancy and need. Its weight is heavily debatable concerning ranking.

@otto I believe the EAT update a short while back played a huge role in what you and others are seeing. It takes time for G to weed through millions, or billions of pages to determine what it wants this month. Nevertheless the whole EAT concept is where things have been shifting for a while and thus also impacts the whole link thing Bloggerist was asking about.

Personally I believe there needs to be a new way to weigh these old metrics like links, keywords, ect. Still important in their own ways yet not the same as it used to be by far.