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.

[vgasoft]

Spammers make money for themselves, employees for google bosses. Google will never beat the spammers :)

[Martin Ice Web]

May i be allowed to add that AI is a machine learning algo. It needs constant input from sources. If new topics coming up, AI is stupid like a stone. So without "compelling" websites covering the topics there are no AI answers. google couldnīt be so stupid to kill serps in favour of AI or could they?

[bebopandrocksteady]

nothing new here: OpenAI (and google!) admits it's impossible to train generative AI without copyrighted materials: [engadget.com...]

www.engadget.com OpenAI admits it's impossible to train generative AI without copyrighted materials OpenAI said it's "impossible to train today's leading AI models without using copyrighted materials."

[superclown2]

OpenAI (and google!) admits it's impossible to train generative AI without copyrighted materials:

That's pretty much what Google did right from the start, building a business based on the copyrighted work of others. We didn't object then because we got a fair bit of business in return. Things are different now though and they consider all our creations as belonging to them.

[christianz]

Traffic very weak since yesterday.

[renatovieira]

I notice intense movement in the SERPs. Lots of volatility. Something going on...

[waynne]

I did some casual research watching how people search and use google from their phones. I asked a few questions with varying need for factual answers or medical expert opinion and in most cases they were answered without even clicking through to a site. (4 people & 5 search questions each) only 3 resulted in a non ad click through to a website and this was for a tutorial guide on how to "make something", a YouTube video providing a review of the item and a product listing on Amazon. The ads performed well with about 4 clicks from each person over the trial period. I noted that older people tended to click through to websites either on ads or organically, younger people skimmed the info they wanted and moved on.

The PAA section which keeps popping up and expanding contains just enough text to answer the query. It does worry me that without context some of this could be bad advice.

We are moving to a world where people will not use "search engine" but "answer engines" it has been a long time coming and when ai arrives it will even worse than it is now.

There seems to be no future in the traditional content website, if you don't offer something truly unique or entertaining then people will have no reason to visit.

I don't blame Google for this, it is the way people are changing the way they find information and they seem to prefer ease and speed over accuracy and reputation of the source.

[londrum]

i'm not quite as pessimistic. wikipedia is basically an answer site with all the info you could ever want, but nobody thinks to use it exclusively. I'm guessing it will be the same with google eventually. people will always want a variety of opinions

it's a bit bizarre really if you think about it. their whole reason for being is to give people easy access to bazillions of websites, but now they think it's a good idea to limit them to just one... themselves

it's like a successful supermarket suddenly deciding to hide all their stock apart from their own home brand. people will soon get bored of that

[EditorialGuy]

their whole reason for being is to give people easy access to bazillions of websites, but now they think it's a good idea to limit them to just one... themselves

And that could be their downfall. Surely they're aware of the risk: If Google Search doesn't provide easy access to Web sites, a competitor (probably a new one, not a legacy search engine) will.

[javelin]

I did some casual research watching how people search and use google from their phones. I asked a few questions with varying need for factual answers or medical expert opinion and in most cases they were answered without even clicking through to a site. (4 people & 5 search questions each) only 3 resulted in a non ad click through to a website and this was for a tutorial guide on how to "make something", a YouTube video providing a review of the item and a product listing on Amazon. The ads performed well with about 4 clicks from each person over the trial period. I noted that older people tended to click through to websites either on ads or organically, younger people skimmed the info they wanted and moved on.

That is way too small of a sample to really tell anything. In reality this method of searching will put Googles bottom line in the toilet. Without dwell time you do not get conversion. This information is out dated now anyway. Have you seen what the kids are doing these days? They are using apps more than anything, Google is for school.

My kid is a computer science major and for them Google is as old as Facebook... its for old people lol. One day it will be the home shopping network compared to whats coming. The question will be, how do we fit into the new model they are creating?

[Shepherd]

Answers and Ads is the future of google. They will fail on both fronts.

Subscription AI (read: paid) is how we will discover the interweb.

[NirthaK]

Hi,

does anyone else face the problem that in the Search Console all URLs seem to be indexed but in fact the impressions and clicks for them are zero? They have completely disappeared in the SERPs. My site is vanishing in that way. From week to week more keywords and impressions are gone. Never coming Back...

NirthaK

[superclown2]

Has Google given up all pretence of being a proper search engine?

I tried some three and four word searches today; let's say an example was 'red unicorns with widgets'. In just about every entry I got 'Missing: widgets ‎| Show results with: widgets.' It was page 2 or even 3/4 before I found what I was looking for.

I am also detecting instances of the search terms I enter being changed. Let's again imagine I entered 'red unicorns with widgets'; the search term miraculously changed to something like 'brown unicorns with horns'.

They are obviously dumbing down their results considerably. Is this for the benefit of searchers? Or Google's bottom line? You decide.

The Web was originally meant as a medium for finding accurate information. Google are destroying that in their greed for profits.

[Bloggerist]

@NirthaK Seeing same as well. A lot of my articles have dropped out of the serps / lost a lot of main keyword rankings they were on before but still ranking for one or two sub keywords

[Mark_A]

@superclown2

I also find it increasingly hard to find specific things in google.

You are not alone!

[christianz]

Me too. I feel like a noob who doesn't know how to use search properly. I used to be efficient with creating sequences of keywords that describe what I am looking for. Now Google just takes those words and spits out something roughly related.

Efficiency of Google has been dumbed down for expert users to noob user level.

I don't want search engine that nudges me into directions it thinks I should go. I want to be in control and I will make sure I do.

By the way - I am not using Google as default search and haven't for many years. I just occasionally use it for some deeper searches that Duck doesn't have the index depth for. And for things like Image search with refinements etc.

That's when I notice how frustrating Google has become.

[superclown2]

I also find it increasingly hard to find specific things in google.

Google's entire business plan relies on them constantly improving profits. Since they don't pay a dividend to shareholders, capital growth is the only way that these people can be encouraged to invest in the company.

It seemed like a good idea at the time since it freed them to re-invest earnings rather than pay them out. The problem is that since 'other bets' have overall been a dismal failure they have to keep earning more and more from search. They are doing this now by degrading the search experience, forcing people to spend more time searching, giving them more incentive to click on ads.

They are currently relying on their monopoly to prevent searchers from going elsewhere but that is unlikely to last as litigation worldwide forces them to behave in a less unethical manner. There is only so much they can achieve by 'lobbying' despite the massive sums they spend on it so eventually their whole system will implode, unless they can make a lot of money from AI (which is by no means certain).

It's simple really. They are caught like rabbits in a car's headlights so things will get worse before they get better.

[ichthyous]

I notice intense movement in the SERPs. Lots of volatility. Something going on...

I had a huge surge in traffic two days ago on the 8th. Then it all started dropping off a cliff by mid day on the 9th. By today (10th) traffic is right back down to much lower levels. Search is -29% at 11am, USA is -53%. This is now the norm...I am seeing the traffic get sucked away into a black hole about every other day now. I am also seeing my ranking jump around drastically depending on how I search, and that explains why some categories on my site can be strong one day and then drop by 50%+ the next day. I think Google is rotating the traffic between more sites now.

Also...direct traffic fell off a cliff in mid November and never returned. It is at half the daily level it used to be at...and that is simply all the graphical changes with Google images. I hate the new images results...why do we need six large images at top. It was fine the way it was with a block of small thumbnails on the page.

[l1fejosh]

Nothing but foreign, non-converting zombie traffic today...what a joke. Huge influx of a bot from Singapore just loading the page and exiting once it's loaded...weird.

[RedBar]

I had a huge surge in traffic two days ago on the 8th.

Since New Year I saw traffic increasing specifically from two areas, Singapore and Brazil. After going through my various log programmes I found both culprits were bots. The Brazilian one was from one specific IP and I seem to have put a stop to that however the Singaporean one I have so far been unable to stop completely as yet even though I have tried blocking within the IP Geolocation as well as the block ranges.

The Singapore one is noticeable in that it has been coming through solely as single page views sometimes 2-4 times an hour sometimes 10-12 times and hour.

[RedBar]

Huge influx of a bot from Singapore just loading the page and exiting once it's loaded...weird

And I just posted about this, PetalBot from Huawei by any chance?

[l1fejosh]

And I just posted about this, PetalBot from Huawei by any chance?

I just took a brief look and it wasn't PetalBot as far as I know... we (hatefully) use Wix, so it's difficult to discern what bots come and go. Usually labelled as "unknown".

I have the same problem with this Singapore bot though, it will just do 1 page view with no engagement and leave once the page has loaded. Happened over 10 times already today.

[BigKat]

Just dropped in to see if anyone is experiencing anything positive, which doesn't seem to be the case. Same for us - four ads above the fold and their PAA box leave very little traffic seeing organic results. I don't expect any improvements really because there is nobody to stand in Google's way as they choke of the entire digital economy except for their preferred partners (eg Amazon). We're still doing ok though as our sales continue rising from other sources. The best I can hope for, since I have zero confidence in politicians/regulators/courts, is Google's user base continues to defect.

[RedBar]

I just took a brief look and it wasn't PetalBot as far as I know

PetalBot is also known as AspiegelBot. This used to be a problem bot and insofar as I know had actually been "disabled" by Huawei, however it seems mightily strange that as soon as the New Year began that this bot suddenly appeared on my global site, likewise with the Brazilian bot.

we (hatefully) use Wix,

Are you allowed your own .htaccess?

[superclown2]

Huge influx of a bot from Singapore just loading the page and exiting once it's loaded...weird

I've been blocking bots from Singapore on a daily basis recently. Most of them are hosted by Amazon.

[Micha]

In addition to the bots, the volume of spam has also increased considerably. Otherwise: traffic has been dropping again since Sunday. But that was to be expected.

[Razorllama]

Since around 2 days ago or so, I'm seeing increasingly irrelevant results for my queries. Not talking as a webmaster here, I'm talking as a user. It's all over the place.

[Bloggerist]

Is it possible to beat the reddit, quora and tiktok taking the first three positions on the serps. If so, how will you go about it?

[Fluff_Nutz]

The cards have fallen. Holidays are officially over. Both my sites and Youtube have now lost traffic. Its expected for sure. They only thrive on holidays and weekends. But I'll admit during the holidays all of my sites and Youtube were stable and the traffic was great. I selfishly want the US back in lockdown :P

I wonder what 2024 has in store. For me I have recruited more people to the team but on a different platform. I still only have the single writer who, for now, has agreed to write on both of my websites. Though my smaller site was created on a whim I don't have the urge to delete it at present. Though that could change in the future. Depends. Time will tell on that one. It is also the one to suffer the most now that the holidays are officially over, with a -50% traffic drop. My main site is still going strong with a +9% increase on January 9th.

I do plan on doing more content with my main site and have set a separate budget for that. I have learnt never to trust any revenue or income from either website. This is also the year I expect to receive a large drop this coming October since I was, thankfully, spared last year. But if I am correct in this then am I right to assume these drops are based on rotation rather than it being random? It will be interesting when the time comes. Its doubtful and I'm most likely just trying to find ways for this to become more stable.

[l1fejosh]

Is it possible to beat the reddit, quora and tiktok taking the first three positions on the serps. If so, how will you go about it?

It's not so promising with Google... but you can try to research your content well and make sure the content is unique, readable and informative. I've managed to take some top positions from LinkedIn and Quora by doing so.

You can also try Quora marketing, just answer the questions and drop a relevant link to your website in the answer. Maybe you'll take the first position because it's Quora...no promises though. Good luck.

[mosxu]

I wished for genuine traffic in 2024 but unfortunately it does not seem to be the case!

Last 3 days zombies are up x 2

[bebopandrocksteady]

the serps are just flat awful. a lot of shuffling going on and many queries are completely irrelevant and missing the mark bad. I'm convinced they've got ai running the show, and it's doing an awful job.

[superclown2]

I'm convinced they've got ai running the show, and it's doing an awful job

There could be a very different reason.

It was revealed during the trial that they are aware that providing poor results makes searchers spend more time on their site and click on more ads. More money for Google.

Was it Sergey or Larry who stated a couple of decades ago that making money from advertising was incompatible to running a search engine?

[ChokenBako]

In my niche for a specific keyword only big brands appear or very large sites. All smaller sites, including mine, appear at positions where noone will ever click...

[BigKat]

It was revealed during the trial that they are aware that providing poor results makes searchers spend more time on their site and click on more ads. More money for Google.

Exactly. Below is what Google said:

We could increase queries quite easily in the short term in user negative ways (turn off spell correction, turn off ranking improvements, place refinements all over the page). If we, as a company, want to go there we should discuss that. It is possible that there are trade offs here between different kinds of user negativity caused by engagement hacking.

Full redacted PDF document presented in court at: [justice.gov...]

Google's public statements and guidance for webmasters (eg create quality content) directly conflicts with internal documents showing leadership within Google exploring ways to reduce search quality to force users to search more. I believe this single document provides all the evidence we need to explain why Google's search results are so extremely poor. Also in the document Google leadership talked about adding refinements all over the page. In our ecom industry, that People Also Ask (PAA) refinement has pushed out the #1 organic results for most queries. It's clear Google wants users to see and click on only ads.

[RedBar]

I've been blocking bots from Singapore on a daily basis recently.

Despite denying with htaccess and robots.txt and enabling IP Blocker in CPanel, PetalBot is ignoring all rules visiting every five minutes. It would seem that many others are having issues with this Huawei bot and, as yet, no simple solution to stopping it has been found, it's annoying since it is distorting my metrics.

[mhansen]

Interesting tweet about the latest SGE layout/function that prompts you to "Learn More" directly under the listed source name, but when you click the "learn more" feature, it just creates a new SGE instance with more information, instead of taking you to the source itself.

Nom nom, SGE eats all the content and keeps users in the Google ecosystem forever.

FWIW, I believe this is the future of Google search. Not sure how badly it's going to hurt their bottom line, but once they stop referring traffic I'll be the first to block anything related to Googlebot and it's AI completely. I already block a ton of the listed AI bots, but Google stated that the ONLY way to prevent SGE from using your information, is by blocking Googlebot completely.

Link to tweet by Andy Simpson. [twitter.com]

[superclown2]

It's clear Google wants users to see and click on only ads.

Perhaps those who claim they made Google the default because they produced the best results will now think again. After all it wouldn't be the billions that Google pays them that affects that decision, would it.

[BigKat]

I believe this is the future of Google search. Not sure how badly it's going to hurt their bottom line, but once they stop referring traffic I'll be the first to block anything related to Googlebot and it's AI completely.

A couple days ago Google announced another round of layoffs, impacting hundreds of workers. I suspect Google will continue downsizing their payroll to help offset losses moving to SGE along with advertisers and users leaving. I'm in the same camp as you - when Google quits sending traffic I will recommend blocking them entirely. As it is now, we get very few sales from Google anymore and providing their users with free information so Google alone can monetize that doesn't sit well with me and those within our company.

Perhaps those who claim they made Google the default because they produced the best results will now think again.

As you noted, it's all about the money and has nothing to do with being the "best" or because of Google's "quality."

[superclown2]

A couple days ago Google announced another round of layoffs, impacting hundreds of workers

Most of those being laid off seem to be involved with Google's 'other bets' which collectively have been an economic disaster. It has been clear for years that without advertising the company would have been out of business ages ago.

The popular opinion is that they want to put all their efforts into AI (in which they are still an also ran). I wonder if this will prove to be another 'other bet' eventually?

[EditorialGuy]

The popular opinion is that they want to put all their efforts into AI (in which they are still an also ran). I wonder if this will prove to be another 'other bet' eventually?

"Artificial intelligence" covers a lot of territory. Will Google rely increasingly on AI as an internal tool for creating search results? I'd say that's a given. Will Google bet the farm on AI as a core end-user product? That's less clear (and maybe less likely).

[superclown2]

Will Google rely increasingly on AI as an internal tool for creating search results? I'd say that's a given

Their current system produces profits beyond the dreams of avarice. Why risk it for switching to another system that costs enormous sums to run? And aren't they facing enough lawsuits already without their search results containing catastrophic hallucinations?

In the meanwhile they are still shedding staff and slashing costs on perks that employees used to take for granted. AI is expected to replace many humans in the ad sales departments but will that really be an improvement? It's difficult enough already to contact a real human there.

Yes I can see them using AI to reduce headcount still further but what effect that will have on employee morale and efficiency remains to be seen. In the meanwhile I still don't know anyone who uses Bard, except when ChatGPT is down. Like Waymo, it might produce profits one day, or may go the way of Google Glass. I expect more redundancies will follow as they ditch more loss making 'other bets'.

Frankly I think that this obsession with AI is a huge gamble that could blow up in their faces. It only takes a few court decisions to side with content creators who produced the data that these systems were trained on to derail the whole project - and governments, who don't understand it, fear it so legislators are unlikely to be friendly toward it. Plus nearly everything they touch which isn't ad related seems to turn to dust.

Finally: Bing launched AI based search to great fanfare. After an initial small rise their share of the search market seems to have fallen rather than risen. Do the public really want it? Gen Z don't seem to, they prefer to get their info from Reddit or TikTok; and we older generation still see it as a useful tool for many things, but looking for the cheapest widgets? No thanks. We prefer to do our own research.

[RubicCubed]

We prefer to do our own research.

While I agree, the unfortunate problem is these search engines no longer care about what their users want. Search engines will continue for force feed their users whatever makes them the most money with little regard to the search experience and quality of the results presented to them.

I find all the ads in Google, their refinement boxes and of course Google's extremely poor organic results to make search extraordinarily frustrating so I don't use Google. When I go to Bing, and accidentally click on their PAA box and get an "Ask Bing Ai" response, I quickly back out of it and then click on the external link below it. The time has come for a paid search subscription service so we can choose our own layouts free of ads, videos, refinement boxes, etc. Also in a search subscription service we could be given more control to blacklist domains from the results we receive (amazon, reddit, outlookindia, etc.). But empowering users, by giving each user choice and control of their search experience, is not something any major search engine is apparently willing to do. Why won't any major search engine offer a subscription? My guess is one accidental click on an ad, depending on the search, can easily fetch the search engine $10+ in revenue. It's possible the "average" user clicks on ads valued at $50+ each month and few would be willing to pay that much or more for a subscription to get rid of ads and all the garbage that has littered the search results.

[ichthyous]

Massive drop today...search traffic is -51% at 1pm. USA traffic -61%, UK is -68%! Looks like something is rolling out...

[EditorialGuy]

Yes I can see them using AI to reduce headcount still further but what effect that will have on employee morale and efficiency remains to be seen.

I don't think the point of using AI in Google Search is to reduce headcount, it's to improve search results by slicing and dicing data to a degree that wasn't possible until machine learning came along.

The effectiveness of using AI to improve search results is mixed (at best) so far, but I'd imagine that Google is willing to tolerate crap in the short run for success in the long run. We're now living in an era when beta testing is ongoing and done in the wild. (That's the price of "free.")

[ichthyous]

Is anyone noticing all of the spam in Google news feed? There are now two fake news articles that come up at the top when I google my own name that simply redirect to ecommerce sites. As if anyone would buy anything from an ecomm site (selling shoes) using those kinds of spammy tactics.

[superclown2]

The time has come for a paid search subscription service so we can choose our own layouts free of ads, videos, refinement boxes, etc.

There was one called Neeva and it was very good. According to the owners it failed not because people wouldn't pay but because no-one could find them thanks to Google's monopolistic activities.

I don't think the point of using AI in Google Search is to reduce headcount, it's to improve search results by slicing and dicing data to a degree that wasn't possible until machine learning came along.

They were quite capable of creating superb search results 20 years ago without the expense of massive data centres and enough electricity to power a small country. That was before Wall Street made them put profits above quality of course. Would they really want to improve their results at the cost of fewer clicks on ads?

[EditorialGuy]

They were quite capable of creating superb search results 20 years ago without the expense of massive data centres and enough electricity to power a small country.

The Web was a lot smaller (and a lot simpler) 20 years ago.

That was before Wall Street made them put profits above quality of course. Would they really want to improve their results at the cost of fewer clicks on ads?

That would depend on how much revenue the ads were generating. Overloading pages with ads can yield diminishing returns.

[Micha]

@Ichthyos Many people have already noticed the spam, and the problem is getting worse. Plus: there are fewer and fewer really new articles in the feed.

The decline continues for me too. Almost 1,000 keywords have been lost this week. I find it particularly annoying that some of the top-ranked websites have been replaced by off-topic websites that have nothing to do with the search term.

[RedBar]

I'm having to remove Statcounter because today 42.2% of my PVs are supposedly from Huawei Clouds Singapore and no matter what I do I can not seem to be able to block their search bots.

The bizarre thing is my Awstats, Webalizer and a couple of other analysis programmes are not showing anything from Singapore whatsoever.