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.

[ichthyous]

Huge -34% drop in search this morning...back to -60% on the home page and main landing pages all falling in tandem, while interior pages are getting unusual amounts of hits. Something is cooking, maybe it hit my site later than the rest of you. Fridays tend to be tumultuous these days...every Friday I get whacked now, and then suddenly Saturday is back to normal again...

[StoneSolid]

Maybe I can't understand the rank algos.. but I wish I would understand any logic in serps whatsoever.

My site is stable in top 5 on bing and duckduckgo for main keywords.
Now, completely vanished for those same terms in google for longer than a month now (used to be in stable top 10 for years).

Isn't that like google admitting that ranking my site at all was a 100% mistake?
I didn't get demoted 3-5-50 spots down but gone all together.

Also, what is the deal with countless results some get on one search page?
It is usually some big news portal kind of site that barely brushes off the search query, yet they get rank spots like:

bigsite.com
bigsite.com/category/blabla
bigsite.com/tag/blabla
bigsite.com/article/blabla
bigsite.com/anotherarticle/blabla

Isn't it like one line of code to exclude multiple results for same site and another line of code in special cases to include it if needed?
(example, if query got a site name in it or something like that)

[MrSnuts]

Hey all,
I've been following this thread for a long time, so, take I'm aware of what you all reported during the repeated updates of last fall and its effects.

From what I read, I seem to belong to the quite small group of people who have not been hit by any of those recent updates.
My project (community/UGC) took a devastating hit some years ago, so, trust me, I feel your pain.
With just about 400 daily clicks from google organic per day, maybe the project is simply too small to appear on the updates radar, I do not know. Maybe brand recognition saved us this time, we do get a good share of people googling the projects name.
Our traffic is following the usual seasonal pattern so far, but one thing is interesting, that's why I'm posting here to ask if anyone else has observed something similar:
We are tracking with Matomo, and there you have a stat on "bounce rate", meaning the % of visitors who leave after viewing one page.
I can set a filter to check the bounce rate of people coming from google organic, and to my surprise, the bounce rate has dropped by almost 10% YoY and is now @24%.
A 5% drop happened around the beginning of November.
So, is google actually sending better-matched traffic our way?
I could not see proof of that in the revenue stats or anywhere else,
but as the change in bounces reveals something about what the update changed, I felt like sharing it with you.
I'd be interested if you can report similar or opposite changes in that metric.

[christianz]

I don't know what my bounce rate is because stopped looking at it years ago. Extremely overrated metric, almost meaningless. Different type of sites have intrinsically different bounce rates. Bounce rate comparison is almost always apples to oranges comparison.

Therefore it most likely also has zero impact on ranking, just like core web vitals and site speed scores.

Back to observations: Yesterday and today traffic is weak. Overall week over week is 1% green. Traffic pattern is identical and weekdays overlay each other with incredible precision (no more than +/- 1% difference week over week). It has been flat like this for several weeks. I would prefer it stay that way, because I am up substantially YoY after all these updates.

So far whenever I see weakness in traffic, it creeps back up over next few days. Not sure if I will continue to be as lucky. The long tail relevance of Google AND Bing/Duck is absolutely awful lately.

[Micha]

Comparing the bounce rate is not very helpful. My news site, for example, has a very high bounce rate by nature. Experience shows that it is lower for a store.

As far as traffic is concerned: I can really set the clock by that. Right on time at 12:30 pm on Friday, the Google traffic collapsed again, Saturday is extremely weak as usual and on Sunday it should rise again. the same procedure as every weekend

[abcdefg]

Now I think general information sites can be mostly replaced by ChatGPT or COPILOT on Bing. The latter, while not perfect, seems to be much better than pure search engines in finding the results that I need. Only sites with deep information that these tools refer to will get meaningful traffic.

The rules for ecommerce is probably changing, too.

Also when it comes to news, search engines will only refer to a small set of their friends. Small sites need to rely on opinions and a strong fan following to survive.

As technology evolves, it seems that while G retains its dominance in traditional search, its relevance is decreasing by the day.

[christianz]

Now I think general information sites can be mostly replaced by ChatGPT or COPILOT on Bing.

Where will they get the information from if those sites disappear? ChatGPT is not information source, it is info scraper.

[MrSnuts]

Comparing the bounce rate is not very helpful.

I agree that is it useless to compare a news sites bounce rate with a store, I'd even say it does not make much sense to compare two news sites, bounce rates will vary, and that is not a quality signal.

What I was trying to point at is that change in bounce rate on one and the same site does reveal something about the referred traffic (if there are no changes on the site, as in our case).

[EditorialGuy]

Where will they get the information from if those sites disappear? ChatGPT is not information source, it is info scraper.

Also, ChatGPT output tends to be bland and boring, both textually and visually. (And it's frequently outdated, since there's an obvious lag between updates of the source material and updates of the ChatGPT derivatives.)

[insideout]

Another big drop in traffic today. Anyone else experiencing the same or is it just me watching my only income vanishing in front of my eyes :(

[superclown2]

Where will they get the information from if those sites disappear? ChatGPT is not information source, it is info scraper.

Absolutely.

the term 'AI' is of course meaningless. These systems are simply data crunchers that sort and regurgitate information that humans have prepared, in a way that other humans have programmed them to. Certainly, they have many uses and will no doubt cause considerable disruption but although they can copy they cannot innovate.

Despite Microsoft's much trumpeted launch of their AI assisted search and chatbot their share of search is actually lower than it was a year ago. Similarly ChatGPT is losing, not gaining, users.

Some of this may of course be due to Google's stranglehold on the major browsers but as others have pointed out the results from both Bing and DDG have got worse, not better. long tail results are particularly poor (as of course they are on Google).

All the main so-called search engines are there to make money, not provide a public service, so this is perhaps understandable.

[RedBar]

Fingers crossed!

My Singaporean Huawei Cloud bot hasn't been seen for 10+ hours and PVs have gone back to normal at 2.2%.

Anyone else who's been having this problem seen the same?

[ichthyous]

Despite Microsoft's much trumpeted launch of their AI assisted search and chatbot their share of search is actually lower than it was a year ago. Similarly ChatGPT is losing, not gaining, users.

The bloom is already off the rose. Has anyone used ChatGPT to generate content? I mean it comes up with some great ideas that gives you some ideas on what you can include, but you have to end up rewriting the entire text because it's all ridiculous sounding hyperbole. People have already caught on to that. In terms of gen AI images and video...also half baked. But I am sure it's all going to get a lot better from here...that is the real threat.

And some of the AI tools in some apps now like Adobe are actually huge productivity boosters...others don't really work as well as intended because Adobe is limited to scraping it's own stock photo archive so it can't get sued like the rest.

Google search not going away any time soon, but what has gone away is USA traffic. I have never seen such a huge imbalance where so much of my traffic from the rest of the world is flowing, but USA is crimped hard every day now. Google is taking advantage of a decrepit US system and the total paralysis of US govt to stop it.

[mhansen]

Where will they get the information from if those sites disappear? ChatGPT is not information source, it is info scraper.

Quite simple, they already have exabytes of our content and they'll just continue to repurpose it over and over again, present it as their own and wrap it in ads. Even if you block Googlebot and all search engines from a site today, they'll keep the content they already have, continue to train their AI to match answers to queries, wrap it in ads and live on much longer than any of us.

Then of course, there is the Forbes and Newsweek type sites that are being greatly rewarded by the current Google algo, who will continue to generate fresh content for every possible query, get tons of Google traffic to click their Google ads and the machine will feed itself in perpetuity.

Google search not going away any time soon, but what has gone away is USA traffic.

Whats gone are quality results. Now you get YouTube, answers, etc - nothing but more Googlespam.

I'm an RV owner for many years and my wife and I love to camp. This weekend, in prepping the camper for the coming season, I found I needed to repair a bit of something inside the camper and head over to Google to lookup how to remove a specific thing. In the past, Google was great for this and the sites uncovered were RV technicians, mechanics, etc. My search results this weekend were not great or detailed enough or they wanted to force me to watch a video, which I really didn't care to do, so I moved to GPT and asked it for the step by step to do what I need and to cite it's sources.

I got a nearly exact step by step for my model camper from 4 tech sites focused on my RV manufacturer. The cited sources were the great sites I have visited many times over the years of owning an RV but never had bookmarked. ALL of the sites were what I would consider the strongest type of EEAT you could have. Legitimate RV repair shops with images, video and written instruction. They did have adsense on them as well.

ALL of the cited sources from GPT experienced crushing blows in the HCU/Core update changes of Sept/Oct 2023 and have lost nearly all of their Google traffic. What replaced them are YouTube channels or YT videos.

Fire up your favorite KW tool like SEMRush and look at the growth YT has seen over the last 4 months. It's pretty staggering.

Sept 2023 > +/- 650m organic keyword exposure in Google SERP's.
Jan 2024 > +/- 2.3B organic keyword exposure in Google SERP's.

Google is narrowing the content, text-based web to itself and those it wants to reward. Everyone else in the text based content world is going to end up as part of it's AI system, whether we like it or not. The biggest question floating around in my mind today, is how soon to just block search completely from my expert, service-based text content and require a login to access.

[christianz]

Quite simple, they already have exabytes of our content and they'll just continue to repurpose it over and over again, present it as their own and wrap it in ads. Even if you block Googlebot and all search engines from a site today, they'll keep the content they already have, continue to train their AI to match answers to queries, wrap it in ads and live on much longer than any of us.

It will be stale content. And the stale-ness will only get worse as more publishers quit or block Googlebot.

On more fun note - here is entertaining read about things we already know (very well). I like the term "en#*$!ification". I think I will use it from now on.

doctorow.medium.com/googles-en****tification-memos-2d6d57306072

Replace the stars (*) with appropriate word to complete this URL.

[BigKat]

Google is narrowing the content, text-based web to itself and those it wants to reward. Everyone else in the text based content world is going to end up as part of it's AI system, whether we like it or not. The biggest question floating around in my mind today, is how soon to just block search completely from my expert, service-based text content and require a login to access.

Requiring a paid login, may be the only hope some have from AI consuming and profiting from their work. Unless one can block all scrapers, Google will simply scrape the scraper. Call me a pessimist, but I don't see anything getting better. Google is like a fast spreading cancer consuming all the healthy tissue that makes up the internet. When Google has consumed all that is good, who will be left to feed Google money?

[Micha]

And the stale-ness will only get worse as more publishers quit or block Googlebot.

That's right, more and more small publishers will have to give up. The big publishers will use their position to make money, see ChatGPT and Bild-Verlag. But before that happens, more and more publishers will hide their content behind paywalls, making the web even poorer. The question is, what will happen sooner: will politicians finally intervene or will Google destroy all the small companies first?

And Bigcat has written the rest appropriately: Google is a spreading cancer and has now thrown all inhibitions overboard. "don't be evil" has become "we don't care about anyone else, you work, we make money"

[EditorialGuy]

Requiring a paid login, may be the only hope some have from AI consuming and profiting from their work.

That won't work for many sites and users. If I want to look up "Widgetville Cathedral" or "pedicab fare in Whatsitburg," I want to see results from a broad range of sites, not just the handful of sites that I subscribe to.

Years ago, there was talk of "micropayments" being the next big thing. In the 1990s, the Microsoft Network (where I was a paid forum manager at the time) had a plan to bring in revenue by charging small amounts for downloads. If, say, you wanted to know about Bernese Mountain Dogs, you'd be able to go to the MSN Pets Forum and download the forum manager's guide to that breed for a dime or a quarter or whatever. The concept never caught on (and, at MSN, was never implemented), and it seems even less likely to work after more than a quarter of a century of Web content mostly being free.

[mhansen]

Requiring a paid login

Personally, I would not require a paid subscription model, just a login to see the protected content. I'll take care of the monetization of that content myself, versus fee-based.

[Razorllama]

Traffic hit by a sledgehammer since yesterday, severe loss of keywords too. Something hit me, continuing today.

[Micha]

Traffic hit by a sledgehammer since yesterday, severe loss of keywords too.

for me too, so google continues to play

[renatovieira]

Here too. Huge drop this morning.

[Treud]

What I see, is a normal trafic (with up and down), but my ranking and impression is just switching really hard for almost 2 weeks.

The CTR is « adjusting » to have a steady traffic though. But impression is like doubling with the add of new keywords. Then revert to normal, rince & repeat for 5 cycles.

Been on holidays for a few weeks, so been quite a long time I didn’t updated stuff on the products or even the site itself.

[ichthyous]

Here too. Huge drop this morning.

Not seeing it yet, but my guess is it's coming. The weekend was low USA traffic, followed by a huge rise on Monday and so far this morning it is still strong. I am also seeing a recovery in top 3 ranking terms for the first time in months really.

The interesting thing is...on strong days lately there are no customers. The inquiries have stopped almost completely...and the few that have inquired are all delusional it would seem. For the first time in a 20+ year career I have people submitting inquiries on my site with budgets literally 1/400th the cost of the item they are asking about. Never in my career have I just ignored phone calls and deleted inquiries without responding, but I do it all the time now. This is the product of manipulation...google has data on the person's demographics and likely spending habits. The viable ones get shunted off somewhere...to ads? The rest float about as leftovers...

[edited by: ichthyous at 7:04 pm (utc) on Jan 30, 2024]

[mhansen]

Traffic hit by a sledgehammer since yesterday, severe loss of keywords too.

Just to show the other side of this, I mentioned previously in this thread that a VERY old site that I long considered dead and outdated, is recovering traffic from G for some reason and saw a few thousand percentage points of visibility increase last week. That trend has carried through this week, and it's back to hundreds of keywords and daily visitors with literally no changes in years.

Today I woke to another website, also less than 15 pages, long forgotten and outdated, seeing +900% increases in SEMR data. Both of these sites were uber-niche focused on one singular topic (separate topics for each site, similar top-level topic though) with -20k monthly demand, but a stupid-high converting visitor comes from it.

These two sites are part of a parent project with 4 domains total, each solely focused on a specific bottom of the funnel targeted visitor, but in the same market at the high level. These two domains dropped to -500 monthly visits roughly 3-4 years ago and I considered them dead-end but kept around for their link value and the few leads they did continue to generate. The other two domains did very well for 10+ years until the HCU last year and have been decimated since Sept/Oct. ALL 4 are exact match domains, 10-20 page sites with content focused on their targeted user and have been online for +10 years.

Not sure what G is doing, but I'll take it while it's here.

[Micha]

I've just had a look at Google News to see what's at the top in my subject area. Result: 4 sites where all you see when you go to them is a promotional image, 2 sites where there's only a headline and otherwise just ads... etc. Not a single news article in the top 10 pages.

Whatever G is doing, it's getting worse with useless nonsense.

[Markedd]

Yeah, I am seeing a significant drop again after the early December halving of traffic. I actually did an experiment and posted an article on some obscure forum. It still ranks way above the article from my website, so there you go. We should build forums, I guess..

[Nutterum]

What happened in the last 3-4 days. Half of my categories on the sites I monitor spiked up the other half went in to the gutter. I can't even tell what G is thinking for real. Digged deeper and it seems the generic keywords algorithm in Google Changed because the results there are ...well underwhelming. That storm Google said was brewing two days ago. Yeah I can see the clouds on the horizon. (this is data from 400 categories over 3 different verticals , so its a sizable data sample)

[renatovieira]

The storm arrived here 3 days ago. Huge drop on my two main websites. Totally different niches in different languages.

Strange that only a few websites noticed drops in the last few days.

[Markedd]

Oh really? A storm? Hehe, I will do a little experiment for the next week and I will post the results afterwards. I have a feeling that Sundar thinks that his toilet flushing is a hurricane.