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.

[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!

[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 ]

[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 ] )

[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?