February 2024 Google Search Observations

[borishar]

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System: The following message was cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/5099651.htm [webmasterworld.com] by engine - 9:30 am on Feb 1, 2024 (utc 0)

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Well it all makes sense if you think about it. The US traffic is lower, overseas traffic higher probably because the ads business isn't as big overseas as it is in US, so they've been jamming ads at the top for US search results but not so much so in other countries. I can also confirm very abnormal drops in traffic starting around 12pm. I am not going off of google analytics, which is horrible nowadays, instead using my locally installed analytics based on nginx data.

[Micha]

I'm happy for some people here that traffic is picking up again. My traffic from Google has been since about 5pm. ... well, disappeared.

[Razorllama]

Massive drop in keywords yesterday and today, according to my Semrush and Ahrefs. Highest I've seen since at least the beginning of November.

[MayankParmar]

One of my posts, which used to rank in the top five, has now dropped to the third page. It seems like LinkedIn Pulse posts and low-quality forum posts are ranking higher than my quality content.

LinkedIn Pulse is of extremely low quality (pure spam) and ranks third. It also uses my screenshot! It has AI-generated content scrapping different sites. This is for a trending keyword with at least 50K+ searches per week.

[BigKat]

In the last couple of days our Google traffic has eroded even further, leaving the amount of traffic Google sends being on par with second tier search engines. Of these second tier search engines, the quality of Google's traffic is the lowest in producing conversions (sales). It's hard to believe Google's value to us, in ecommerce, has faded so quickly.

[Markedd]

@BigKat In the product review niches and technology news, things are pretty much the same. No winners, just forums above everyone else. A single mention of the keyword, even out of context is enough to push the post above every other article.
And yes, even a website focusing on affiliate marketing is absolutely destroyed, going from making 2K a month in September of last year to $100.

[ichthyous]

Not seeing a massive drop yet, but I have noticed that more keywords have been dropping off very slowly...that had stopped for a short time.

While traffic has been far higher this week than in January, it has produced zero conversions. I find that very odd. Im not even getting inquiries from customers, just tons of solicitations submitted in my contact form and people asking for jobs and internships.

[Treud]

Since 3/4 days my traffic is going low, -20% pretty much, but receiving in the same time more inquiries. Seems complicate to guess what is bringing just zombie traffic or just real customers.

[Micha]

And it's still going downhill, according to Sitrix my site has lost a lot of visibility again. If Google is already messing around again, then they seem to be working on giving us small publishers the rest ...

[NeapTide]

I am thinking about switching to apps and games development since Google is the monster that can destroy your website(s) by manipulating SERPs in their own favor.

With apps and games you could get a steady flow of income since apps are installed on individual phones and only way to kill your business is by banning your account which is not going to happen unless you are making illegal apps or adult games.

[vlexo]

Not sure what to make of this but since the 8th we saw a term which consistently rank in position 2 for the past three years suddenly drop to page 2 for highly lucrative terms but then keep ranking for most other terms.

How can one run a business with employees like this when your business can suddenly vanish? Nothing to do with content quality as we have continuously invested a lot more than others into that area and also into promoting those areas with a legit PR approach and using third party surveys we've commissioned.

In short, Google sucks.

[Markedd]

Since my main website is essentially in the underworld right now, I was curious to see how those famed adwords would work. I set up a campaign which would emulate one of my best-performing articles up until the end of last year. And then I ran that campaign to a few days. The results? Well, I lost money because I only got a couple of clicks. Just another story to add to the curious world of Google book.
If you think Google will give you back your traffic if you pay them, well, think again.

[RubicCubed]

I ran that campaign to a few days. The results? Well, I lost money because I only got a couple of clicks

I'm sure many will be tempted to test G Ads as well, and my advice is to not do it. The days of Google being the best at answering user searches, and displaying targeted ads, is long over. Google exists to only serve themselves, and will drain budgets quickly to fill their own pockets without concern of value to advertisers. Most of our traffic and sales are coming from other search engines with what Google sends us as the worst quality traffic and bots.

[delorean]

Why many of my top pages (indexed) are nowhere to be seen on Google search? Is this a thing now?

Meanwhile, my site is performing well on Bing.

What's happening to Google?

[BigKat]

What's happening to Google?

What's happening at Google is everything I would expect from poor leadership. Effective leadership would be able to manage sustained growth through strategy and innovation without throwing everyone under the bus like Sundar Pichai has. Users can't find what they are searching for, advertisers struggle to maintain a positive ROI (most can't), authentic publishers are buried under forum results and businesses are buried under ads. Unless the board of directors takes action, Google will continue losing its trust/relevance among those who helped Google rise to their dominance.

[ichthyous]

What's happening at Google is everything I would expect from poor leadership

What's happening at Google is everything we should expect from a MONOPOLY. It has complete control of the market, so it doesn't need to improve quality of the SERPs or even worry about losing a few users here and there...where else are they going to go? Google isn't worried about any of this...if they have to drive every content provider out of business just to raise their short term profits by two cents they will do it. This will never change without two things happening: 1) the general public must wake up and realize that they are losing out by letting monopolies like Google, Amazon, etc control their respective markets without any competition, and 2) the US government must respond to public sentiment over monopolies having too much power and influence. #1 Perhaps is just picking up steam now...#2 is still a long way off since all of these monopolies donate tons of cash to campaigns, what is the incentive for any elected official to go against them? This is classic monopolistic rent-seeking behavior.

A third path is that a new and disruptive technology will displace Google, and that is looking like it's probably going to happen before #1 and #2. AI search isn't hurting them much yet, but it's going to eventually. I used Perplexity AI search for the first time and it was very efficient...and it includes links to every source, so you can go to the site if you want. A lot of younger users will switch to AI search as Google search is more and more being seen as their parents' search tech.

[mosxu]

“rent-seeking behavior”

The harassment run by the algo is unlawful 1st from the consumer perspective 2nd the damages created to small businesses are not recoverable!

There is no evidence of who is who coming a small business website…

[samwest]

A third path is that a new and disruptive technology will displace Google

and Google with its massive resources will quickly scoop up that technology and either sit on it or absorb it.
Ever wonder why the Google UI still looks pretty much the same after 25 years?
Behind the black box, much different tho.

[ichthyous]

and Google with its massive resources will quickly scoop up that technology and either sit on it or absorb it.

Even Google doesn't have the capacity to 'scoop up' AI. It has competitors breathing down its neck, and they are just as large as Google is. Amazon, Microsoft, etc. Wait until Apple also jumps in. And we haven't seen the non-US players yet, those are coming I'm sure...

[ichthyous]

Big drop overnight and this morning. USA traffic is -46%, UAE is -40%. Search is -20%, and direct traffic (GI) is -40% this morning. My UAE traffic has fallen off a cliff since the end of January in a similar downward stairstep pattern...every day a new lower low, until finally it's down by half or less most days. Anyone else with significant UAE traffic seeing this?

[McKJudoChop]

We saw a large traffic drop (52.3%) hit on Jan. 17 and it has not gone back up since then. Coincidentally we also went from 0 poor URLs on Search Console to over 3K in one day for mobile and desktop.
We just started our SEO journey in September of 2023. I am stumped. We were doing so well.

[Micha]

The only thing that could lead to a change at Google would be a new management, the current one is completely haphazard, has no vision at all and only sees the company as a money-printing machine. This cannot go on forever, because as has already been written: Advertisers are becoming increasingly dissatisfied, so are we webmasters and so are the people who use Google.

So briefly to the figures for my website: as usual, a weak Monday, but in keeping with the weekend, no up, but no down either.

[MayankParmar]

Please search "Windows 10 ISO" and see the results. There's a LinkedIn Pulse post, which seems to be an AI written version of another website on the same search result.

[EditorialGuy]

Our main editorial travel site has had a very slight drop in the last few days, compared to the previous week (probably just a return to normalcy after one page had a spike for several days last week).

We do have a small spin-off site that has been getting a boost after nine years as an also-ran. It's geared to short-form content:--"All the basics for shorter trips"--while our original and much busier site, which is is skewed toward in-depth long-form pages, is down considerably from last year despite links from places like the BBC and CNN.

[RedBar]

which is is skewed toward in-depth long-form pages, is down considerably from last year

I've noticed similar in my industry, sites with much less information plus many inaccuracies and poor images seem to have had ranking boosts.

[mhansen]

A few observations in Feb thus far. 7-YO US based lead-gen site. Expert detailed content from 20+ years in industry. Unique tools for consumers. 300 or so content pages (easily copied, outranked by Forbes), 50 or so tool pages (Not easily copied as they are interactive and require a bit of logic).

A few changes I made in Oct/Nov to the site in response to HCU:

- Removed above the fold CTA as it led to a page with a lead form and had a very high abandon rate and pitiful GA user metrics.
- Modified lead form to a multi-step, conversational type form that takes about 30-45 seconds to complete and asks for no personal information until step 3.
- Beefed up authority/trust signals via about us, contact, phone, physical address, linked to LLC business registration at local Secretary of State office. Linked to business related Trademark on at USTPO office.
- De-optimized titles from KW/solution focus, to Trademarked/solution focused.

Result of efforts thus far:

- Site is exploding in popularity on Bing/DDG/Yahoo/AOL. Visitors have increased from these search engines by 80% or more since late December 2023.
-12% referrals to general content difference in Google in GA4, so no gains there. Tools have seen a 40% increase in Google. (Content = bad, Tools = Good)

One other thing I noticed about the site metrics in SEMRush, is that it has dropped 35-40 points in what they call their "Domain Authority Score". What used to be a strong 60-65 or so, is now a 24. I checked the site in ahrefs and the domain did the same there, dropping from a 59 DA to a 38 DA. I don't really track or monitor backlinks, so I don't have any information why those metrics dropped after the HCU.

[Ingall]

The problem is that Google cannot recognize the quality of a website and simply relies on links.

This is what Google itself writes about quality of content:

"Once our systems have identified relevant content, they try to prioritize those that appear to be most helpful. To do this, they identify signals that help determine which content is characterized by expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness.

One of the many factors we use for this are links from other prominent websites to the respective content. This has often proven to be a good sign of trustworthiness.”

Even if I have the best expertise and write the most useful content for my users, it is of absolutely no use to me if I have no backlinks.

I love writing helpful articles for my users and invest a lot of time in research and fact checking. I receive positive feedback from my readers every day by email.

However, it is very frustrating when you see, for example, that a paid article with false information on the subdomain of a large newspaper ranks first on Google for my keyword, while my site can no longer be found at all.

[Conro]

It's as if Google took the list of the most visited sites for each country and put them on a whitelist to be even more visited and not be penalized no matter what they do. All the other sites act as available in search only if necessary. Anyway, my site after almost 10 years is dead, not even in the Google community they were able to help me after seeing the site, and every change I make only makes things worse

[NeapTide]

Everybody should check their core web vitals and see if CLS, LCP, FID are failing or passing. If any of these 3 are failing your website will be penalized (happened after HCU to 1 of our website.)

[Conro]

@ NeapTide If that were the case, we would have solved it long ago and the LCP FID and CLS of my site are perfect, so they have nothing to do with it. Sites that have failed LCP, FID and CLS do great if they are protected by Google

[NeapTide]

Indeed. But not everyone is running CNN, BBC like news outlet websites. So we need to fix the basic issues then hope for the best although hoping for the best when working with Google is more like a fantasy these days.