Sometimes Google Gets it Wrong, and that's Ok Too

[ghostofseo]

I have been publishing articles daily for a decade plus, in that time I have personally seen the flow of Google traffic turn on and off many a times. So this pattern isn't new. However to see a drop like this in the middle of our "busy content writing season" when our focus is on things related to snow makes me wonder?

30 Day Stats [ibb.co]

So I started looking for my articles and they have all but disappeared from Goggle. Especially any listicle roundups. We went from ranking #1 in most terms to not existing in Googles eyes. Ouch.

That being said, its Monday and I'm in the office creating new content as we always do and always have. Google may decide to show my site again, or maybe not? I know our content is helpful, and it wouldn't have ranked #1 for many moons if it wasn't so.

So whatever update happened it hugely effected my traffic from Google. Is that enough to slow me down. Not a freaking chance..

Hopefully this rant encourages you to stay the course, if you build it they will come... Just maybe not through Google?

[tangor]

One way to survive g's confusing ups and downs is to have a great work ethic and desire to succeed, come heck or high water.

That said, the last decade or so g has been fine tuning the ads magic box (and serp listings!) to produce the greatest income while whittling away anyone else's opportunities.

By the same token the continuing growth of websites (all in search of a goldmine) eternally dilutes the landscape (pie) and g, no matter how big they get, is starting to have trouble keeping everything indexed ... so things get lost every once in a while. When dollars fall off for g they go back through what's been done to see if they can revive any of that past income and .... that's part of the ups and downs with the system.

Trying to avoid killing the golden goose (make money on the internet!)...

[EditorialGuy]

I also take the long view. Google's search results these days strike me as being a stopgap to prevent spam from taking over the SERPs while the company tries to cope with AI's impact on the Web. (Why else would old Reddit and Quora threads be so dominant?)

Still, the long-term outlook for publishers does look somewhat gloomy, with Google's 10 blue links being increasingly lost in the clutter of sponsored results, "Things to know," PPA, SGE, and other distractions from what used to be the main event.

[superclown2]

Google's search results these days strike me as being a stopgap to prevent spam from taking over the SERPs while the company tries to cope with AI's impact on the Web

I take it you have not read the documents released after the trial, when it was proposed to decrease the quality of the SERPs in order to increase clicks on ads. You should do so, they make very interesting reading.

[ghostofseo]

@superclown2 can you link me please.

I did a search for one of my article titles today in quotes. It was the first listing but hidden under 9 ads, and the topic was extremely specific. So yeah they are pushing the ads but the user experience will go to #*$!. This is like putting a million ads on your content pages and not expecting it to affect user engagement. Would be great to see Goggle limit the amount of ads on pages on Google.com ala the same way they recommend limiting ads or maybe there is a rule in place now that says how many ads you can run on a website at one given time. Isn't Google a website too?

[superclown2]

@superclown2 can you link me please.

Certainly. [theverge.com ]

These should be required reading for everyone one interested in what Google is prepared to do to keep their profits increasing.