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.

[RubicCubed]

I was determined not to use them but hey I do more and more against my principles

The ad spam is so extreme in search it may push users into AI just to escape the ads. We know the lack of ads in AI will be short lived as these search engines eventually drop the ad spam hammer and make their AI products just as cluttered as they have done with search.

[Micha]

The ad spam is so extreme in search it may push users into AI just to escape the ads. We know the lack of ads in AI will be short lived as these search engines eventually drop the ad spam hammer and make their AI products just as cluttered as they have done with search.

Or it will be expensive for the user because access will generally cost money.

[Conro]

@mosxu I can’t use something knowing that the answer could be wrong. It doesn’t make sense to use it. Then it’s true that AI can be used for many things, but for the answers it seems useless and only a way to spread falsehoods

[RubicCubed]

Or it will be expensive for the user because access will generally cost money.

It may be ad-free for now as part of their onboarding strategy to gain user acceptance. But for the average user, paying a fee won't be something well-received especially in the current economic environment. I wouldn't mind paying a small fee for AI powered search, providing I could fully customize answers/results. But after all that has happened in the last year and a half with Google, I'd rather continue to be bombarded with ads in Bing then give Google a penny. But quite honestly I don't see Google being able to deliver. Just looking at Google's search results we can see what a mess they have made. Seeing such weakness at Google is prompting OpenAI to work on their own search engine as recent reports suggest. Maybe new leadership at Google could turn the boat around, but for now it looks like Google's leadership has the Google boat sailing full speed ahead straight toward a category 5 hurricane.

[ichthyous]

Huge drop in USA traffic today...-58% at 11:30am. Canada also ended the day -44% yesterday, UK - 30% and UAE same. Today UK and UAE have recovered and USA is way off. Once again, it's traffic to major landing pages that is taking a hit...so the most competitive terms. It seems that there is no winning...one week of decent traffic but zero conversions, followed by this week of terrible traffic since Monday, but at least a few inquiries and a sale.

[Conro]

@mosxu I use Copilot for the English translations of what I write here, but I would never take for granted any answer to a question that it gives me.

[EditorialGuy]

I would like to know how many people use gemini, copilot or ChatGPT instead of a search engine. I try to use them every now and then, but they answer any question, often in a wrong way....

There's a lot of focus on answers these days (e.g., the notion that Google is turning into an "answers engine," as opposed to a "search engine"), but we need to remember that not every searcher is looking for an answer to a specific question.

Take the person who wants to know more about chocolate souffles, or riding the tourist riverboats in Widgetburg. That person may well be looking for Web sites, not just highly targeted mini-essays. (It's like the difference between browsing the shelves in a public library and asking a question at the reference desk. Clearly, there's a place for both.)

IMO, if Google were to abandon its roots and turn into nothing more than an AI-driven "answer engine" (which I consider to be highly unlikely), there would be an opening for a new search engine that helped people find content of interest on the Web.

[BigKat]

if Google were to abandon its roots and turn into nothing more than an AI-driven "answer engine" (which I consider to be highly unlikely), there would be an opening for a new search engine that helped people find content of interest on the Web.

Google abandoned its roots long ago. Google isn't an AI-driven answer engine quite yet, but has been an ad engine in our industry for over a year. Seeing that opening for a new search engine you speak of, OpenAI is reportedly working on their own search engine as I posted yesterday. Who knows if a search engine owned by OpenAI will be competitive, but they have the success blueprint to follow that Google originally created only to abandon in a quest to maximize profits at any cost.

[not2easy]

The discussion about OpenAI's project is here: [webmasterworld.com...]

Yes, it was posted here first, but AI discussions are in the GPT and AI Topics forum.

[oldog]

AI is the future.

[Razorllama]

After the decimation by Google, Bing + DDG are now 30% of my organic traffic. Surprisingly enough, I see visitors from those two engines converting way better than those from Google, on average.

Needless to say, since ~3 days or so ago there's been a further -15% to my already paltry traffic.

[RubicCubed]

I see visitors from those two engines converting way better than those from Google, on average.

Google uses a variety of tactics to keep users searching and clicking on ads instead of answering their searches, which we see in Google's extremely poor traffic quality. Even after removing the garbage traffic coming from Google, the conversion rate from Google traffic is so bad it can reach 1/20th of other search engines some days. That shows how bad Google is toying with their users to wring the most ad clicks out of them they can.

[ichthyous]

Bing, DDG, Yahoo etc are just a small fraction of my traffic...maybe 3% total. The rest is all Google. There's no way around Google's stranglehold on search and it definitely is not at all what it used to be in terms of referring traffic and customers. It's gotten very bad this year. One would think it's a recession...the inquiries from UK, Australia and Canada have stopped completely. Europe is low, UAE dropped completely. Now only very poor quality low budget and delusional people in usa inquiring about things far beyond their price range.

You have to give them credit at Google, they have found a way to determine intent very well since they are sitting on the data. They find a way to always get those real buyers to places where they make money and never to organic sites. What will happen over time is that people will stop investing in their websites as there is no payback. Users will stop trusting small organic sites and instead acquiesce to whatever google feeds them.

We have to look at the bigger picture...this is really about monopoly and decimation of small business. AI search won't be any different, it will eventually be monetized. Someone needs to step in and actually regulate...that's why those who call for no regulation and a completely unregulated market are just dupes really.

[EditorialGuy]

A is the future.

"I want to say just one word to you: 'Plastics.'"

[RubicCubed]

You have to give them credit at Google, they have found a way to determine intent very well

I guess this depends on ones niche. Google has pretty much spammed Amazon ads in my niche with products that are similar but not precise to a fine-tuned search. The organic results are a sloppy mess, but since few users scroll down to see them it doesn't appear worth Google's time to fix it.

[Micha]

Ouch, the devaluation continues. When I look at my Seo tool, I can only shake my head. Once again many keywords lost, mostly replaced by generic garbage. It's also sad to see that the impressions on Google News are increasing, according to Search Console, but there are still zero clicks. But I'm not sure whether ican trust the data from the console at all.

[ichthyous]

@Micha...I am also seeing a drop in keywords today, after a slow rise for some time. Traffic is higher today, while it was lower when they were rising. Ultimately it depends on the page dynamics...how many ads, widgets, and also how the site link is presented. Google figured out that giving sites too many pretty image carousels makes people gravitate to organic sites, so they removed them and down traffic went.

[Micha]

@Ichthyos That's right, the traffic really looks better today than on other Sundays, but that doesn't help if the overall numbers are declining.

[Shepherd]

They find a way to always get those real buyers to places where they make money and never to organic sites.

I don't know what they did with them but I can tell you they are not in google Ads...

Plastics.

Ah yes, being of a certain age I can remember when plastic bags saved the trees from the evil paper bag and all us humans from the next ice age...

[morpheus83]

This seems to be like the October HCU update. Since Feb 14th traffic is slowly disappearing.

[EditorialGuy]

Our editorial travel site's traffic climbed 20 percent on February 15 (week over week) and has been up by an average of about 15 percent on the days since then.

The boost may just be a normal seasonal increase, since Google hasn't confirmed an update and our daily year-over-year numbers haven't improved.

[Markedd]

Did you all read this: [seroundtable.com...] ? Essentially, what the Google bots say is that it's possible to recover but you need to make the changes slowly. What changes? Who knows, but they need to be delicate. Gently push and pull. Push and pull. You need to read the body language!

www.seroundtable.com Google Talks More About The Time It Takes To Recover After A Helpful Content Update A week ago we wrote about the timing it takes to recover from a Google helpful content update. Then on Friday, Danny Sullivan, Google's Search Liaison, added more clarity on the fastest time a site can possibly recover after being negatively impacted by the helpful content update.

[Micha]

This is the usual drivel from Google to keep webmasters in line. I have to be honest, I ignore it now because my experience has taught me otherwise. Here's a link tip to go with it. The article uses concrete examples to describe how Google favors certain websites. [housefresh.com ]

housefresh.com How Google is killing independent sites like ours - HouseFresh And why you shouldn't trust product reviews from big media publishers ranking at the top of Google.

[morpheus83]

Thats a great @Micha. The silver lining is that people from Google's team are proactive on Twitter and are in receipt of such stories. But all in all, the HCU update has made things worse for many.

[Martin Ice Web]

Well, I can say that zombies are back in full mode. But i guess that the update has started allready on 9/2. Traffic is more or less stable.
What we are seeing is that mobil traffic took a hit.

[Conro]

@Micha That article explains well what is happening. In my case I am finding myself uploading photos to products for which I wrote reviews 7 years ago and for which I had published the manufacturer’s photos because they were better than the photos taken with my phone. When I see recommended articles “the best” with pros and cons I see images of the manufacturer, but if you are a big site it is fine, otherwise there is an algorithm to penalize small sites. I see, however, that among affiliates they take it out on each other, but when they search on Google “the best” and find shopping ads in the foreground they do not think that those are the first clicked because people might actually think that those are the best products. It seems to me misleading advertising by Google and in fact until a few years ago in those queries “best” there was no shopping or ads.

[BigKat]

The article uses concrete examples to describe how Google favors certain websites.

One of the sites Google is ranking in the HouseFresh screenshot example wrote a product review for one of our products when we were selling on Amazon. When we quit selling on Amazon, they changed a few blurbs of text on the page, replaced the image with a new pic and changed the affiliate link to our Chinese competitor's product page on Amazon. Mind you the product they are now giving a great review for fails to meet safety standards.

[MrSnuts]

Like EditorialGuy, I also do believe something is moving, or maybe the re-classification of sites has finally been applied to my project.
I am seeing changed crawl budgets, significantly more indexed pages (those went down by 50% somewhere in the middle of 2023, started to rise again about two weeks ago) and +20% clicks since Feb 15th. The project actually received peak organic clicks per day in the past 500 days yesterday.
We had not been affected much in the fall core/HCU mayhem, so, it's not a recovery from any recent updates, nor anything seasonal or event/news related.

[Micha]

And here's another "nice" example of Google's nonsense. The article I linked to above resulted in a response from Google. There needs to be more diversity etc. so the usual talk. However, if you now look at how the article ranks, you can see that a Reddit post that also links to this article ranks number one and the original article ranks below it. (see: [searchengineland.com ] )

searchengineland.com Article complaining about being outranked on Google being outranked by Reddit Google responds that it wants to do better with ranking smaller sites amongst larger sites, only to see that article being outranked by a larger site.

[RubicCubed]

@Micha
Google ranking Reddit has been discussed as a way to prepare users for what Google search will be in the future - a chat box conversation with no links to other sites. That is except for ads. That's the only logical conclusion I can come to for Google wanting to give Reddit so much weight/exposure in the search results because it's a terrible UX.

[RedBar]

Whilst my global site's traffic for the past few weeks has steadied and been much more consistent I cannot say the same for various countries' SERPs.

The UK SERPs for my widgets especially reminds me of a few years ago, very thin content with a single image, I have to scroll well into the second or third pages to find widget pages with quality and more in-depth information.

Insofar as my USA SERPs is concerned for my most popular keywords, just where the heck are the listings, they are almost impossible to find amongst all the Google classified ads plus added/included Google Garbage?

Judging by the massive increase in email spam I am getting it would seem I am totally altogether in the wrong business!

[BigKat]

Nice post Micha. Unfortunately we see the injustices of Google's ranking methodology running rampant and giving a huge boost to Reddit across many different searches. Considering Google's ad rep efforts have been reported to now focus on recruiting small businesses, it doesn't surprise me Google has decimated small businesses in the SERPS to make it easier for their ad reps to get small businesses to part with their money.

[sk7411]

Something has hugged my site today :)

[EditorialGuy]

That's the only logical conclusion I can come to for Google wanting to give Reddit so much weight/exposure in the search results because it's a terrible UX.

Maybe Google is just using Reddit and Quora results as a Band-Aid to keep AI spam from taking over the SERPs until it can find a fix? I find it hard to imagine that Google wants to kill its cash cow. (And no, "Google wants to make its search results as horrible as possible so people will click on the ads" isn't a serious argument.)

[EditorialGuy]

This caught my eye (or maybe I should say "opened my eyes") in a Search Engine Roundtable comment thread. It's about buying Reddit upvotes, creating and closing threads strategically, etc. to leverage Reddit for SEO purposes:

https://youtu.be/CDT3FvVk2oA?si=yHKpGSqvuQcdjbZB

[edited by: not2easy at 3:28 am (utc) on Feb 22, 2024]
[edit reason] unlinked ad [/edit]

[christianz]

Something has hugged my site today :)

Most likely a garden variety site-hugger.

[Shepherd]

If google farts, there's a reason. Redit ranking should be very clear now...

[reuters.com...]

[Conro]

@Shepherd I have been saying for months that the reason was that, same thing for the other forums and big brand sites that google considers reliable. I also notice that there are seo who advise webmasters to create content in a certain way, but they will never rank following their advice, but they will instead be perfect for training AI with ready answers. Watch out for certain people, they don’t want you to create content for users but for AI, like those who tell you that on a recipe site you should go straight to the recipe without any introductory nuance, they don’t say it to help you, but to allow AI to easily process what you wrote.

[JohnPoul]

@Conro

If I came for a recipe, then I want to get a recipe. I don't want to read the story of the creation of a pot or frying pan, or the discovery of potatoes as an edible product, or about "how I want to please myself with junk food like chips and a frothy drink on a Friday night" by reading a ton of "any introduction nuance" before the recipe for homemade chips about the creation of these chips and history of the invention of a frothy drink.

Isn`t it?

[Conro]

@JohnPoul Do you have any mobility problems that prevent you from moving your hands? You just have to rotate the mouse wheel and find the recipe or swipe your finger on the phone screen. Are you really that lazy? If you want an immediate answer you can use chatbots, why don’t you use them? You would get exactly what you want

[Micha]

If google farts, there's a reason. Redit ranking should be very clear now...

As they say in Germany: A rogue who thinks evil of it.

[superclown2]

If google farts, there's a reason. Redit ranking should be very clear now...

Wow. Presumably all the people who provided the content to Reddit have agreed to this? And those people whose content is on Reddit without their permission?

Where does fair use end and theft begin?

If you want an immediate answer you can use chatbots, why don’t you use them? You would get exactly what you want

If it was a Google powered chatbut you would probably get poisoned by some of the ingredients it suggested.

However; yes most people are 'lazy'. We are busy people and want quick answers (which is why I don't use YouTube unless there is no other choice). Sites that don't answer the query quickly soon get demoted.

[christianz]

@JohnPoul Do you have any mobility problems that prevent you from moving your hands? You just have to rotate the mouse wheel and find the recipe or swipe your finger on the phone screen. Are you really that lazy? If you want an immediate answer you can use chatbots, why don’t you use them?

I would still prefer actual recipe websites but ones that don't include useless fluff just to boost word count. We all know why these stupid introductory paragraphs and subheadings are there - they are there for SEO only.

Just like author bio pages and author pictures - nothing to do with users, all for SEO only. Made for SEO.

[christianz]

@EditorialGuy

Good post and good video this Jesus has. I would say he is more of a spam Jesus not SEO Jesus but, regardless, anyone who still claims sites rank based on merit/quality etc, should watch these videos.

Also this proves that current chaos in SERPs is not 100% Google greed driven. It is at least 50% due to attacks by spammers, now armed with genAI etc. And of course - EAT policies backfiring via parasite SEO etc.

[Conro]

@superclown2 If you're lazy enough to scroll down to find the recipe, I doubt you're on that page to read it. You can then make an entire site where you just write the recipe and the steps in 100 words and that site will not only not be ranked, but probably not even indexed because it is considered spam From google

[Conro]

@christianz If a recipe site also tells the story of a recipe, users might be interested in it, the same for the equipment you use to make it, such as the model of mixer, the type of oven, etc., is of interest. Maybe these sections should be put after the recipe, but I wouldn't say that they are useless, also because it shows the author's culinary culture

[saladtosser]

Wait, I thought JM and DS said the reason they put reddit at the top of every search result now was because Google search users could no longer find what they wanted on Google these days due to Googles spammy PAA spam, and because they saw the users appended "Reddit" to their search terms they wanted to help the searcher get to reddit without needing to append "Reddit"?

Now we find there is alternative motivation? JM and DS lied to us? Shocked!

Although I did wonder why google didn't just do a 301 straight to reddit for all google searches, bypassing their own spam, now it makes sense ..... Build the reddit database and community with increased visibility ready to harvest for AI! Then dump reddit for the AI later on?! Short term ism from Reddit!

[Juniya]

Wow, so this FINALLY explains why Google is ranking Reddit high for everything, same with LinkedIn(buying support for court cases with Microsoft) and Quora(Google might out right buy this company). In the end the quote is still true, follow the money.

Even though Google is harvesting the data for AI, they can't dump Reddit anytime soon because there is always something or something discussed that Ai can't solve, let's say a new video game that is released and there is some scandal about it something that first needs user input like how to beat some glitchy map/level, it will first be posted on Reddit and then Google's AI can eat it up, but this will mean Reddit will remain on top because users go there first to spill their guts out before anywhere else on the planet.

We are in trouble.

[ichthyous]

Huge traffic drops (-86%) in my most important terms that I have ranked at the top for for 20 years. I checked to see whether I disappeared from the top three and no, I'm still there. SEM shows an increase of one spot, and I am not seeing anything different on the page. I have two spots in the huge image block as well. But traffic is exactly -86% for both. Any ideas on what is going on here?

[superclown2]

You can then make an entire site where you just write the recipe and the steps in 100 words and that site will not only not be ranked, but probably not even indexed because it is considered spam From google

I have a recipe site that contains hundreds of recipes. No blurb, not even photos, just ingredients and short instructions. Users love it and the number of return visits is massive. Google loves it too and has done for nearly two decades.
Presumably you never learned the KISS principle?