March 2024 Google Search Observations

[Cyril TechWebsites]

Over the years, Google's principle seems to have shifted from its original "Don't be evil" to "Be a pure evil"... I guess if some authorities or government will stop it? They are just stealing our content, destroying the Internet prioritizing user-generated content (UGC) pages with a lack of quality and expertise, destroying teams and content creators behind the websites.

A lot of you are saying that they are after money. But what's their goal for the future? What result will they have in 2 or 3 years more? Internet will die, it's obvious that Reddit forum's pages aren't answering the majority of people's searches. What will they do when no one will continue publishing and updating content? Aren't they face a deep stagnation because of this? I just can't get what they are doing - I understand they are trying to steal everything is possible, but what's next step? How will they survive in the circumstances they are creating?

[Conro]

@BlueEyes82 The difference is even more noticeable when you enter Bing and immediately find the sites with the precise answer to the question. Strangely enough, Bing hasn't gone as crazy as Google because of the content created with AI and even though I use Bing I can't figure out if they have also selected sites with AI content because they still answer my query correctly. However, I suspect that the problem of AI-created content is only affecting google

[BlueEyes82]

@conro That's exactly the point. Google thought they absolutely had to do something and turned all the wrong screws. Nobody up there says that, otherwise they'll lose their job. It is now company philosophy. There are only the phrases "the search quality is constantly being improved".

Before the HCU update, almost no one complained about the quality of the search. Instead of penalizing individual pages manually, they tried to fight AI with AI and essentially destroyed search. The current update doesn't improve anything, but rather makes things much worse. The relevance of the search is so underground...

[Conro]

@BlueEyes82

In other 3 weeks, the search will suck even more. It cannot be otherwise.

[Conro]

I just read that Mediavine now accepts sites starting at 10000 sessions per month. Consequences of hcu?

[ghostofseo]

@conro,

Mediavine may be the “kiss of death” imagine if your content site used mediavine and then Google decided they didnt like aggressive ads.

I believe this has played into the 96% drop in organic traffic with the HCU update, only thing that changed in that time we started running Mediavine

[Moiz Banoori]

@ghostofseo+ I dont think Mediavine has anything to do with it.

I was just checking bing today, and the results are incredible, lol my site at least shows up there for terms I search.

[Fluff_Nutz]

Yeah, Raptive also changed their requirements too last month. From 100,000 pageviews to 50,000 I do believe it is due to all of these updates. G are killing everything. They just hit for the sake of hitting. My site is white flag, full SEO, no AI and it still gets smacked. Currently -50% compared to my usual normal average.

I'm seriously thinking of switching platforms, to one that is not owned by Google. Ignoring and abandoning everything that is owned by them. They are a terrible company. It's amazing how incompetent idiots can be in charge of such big corporations. Google and even WB. The latter of which are now known for failing to release finished movies and calling gamers toxic because their bare bones and lacklustre video game failed to surpass expectations, go figure..

[oldog]

"m seriously thinking of switching platforms, to one that is not owned by Google. Ignoring and abandoning everything that is owned by them"

G has 90% of search worldwide , if you failed there is just curtains....unfortunately
Bing first has a small tiny piece of the cake and its search results are not better than google

[superclown2]

However, as they are so slow in sorting out Google's monopoly, if they are even trying to, it makes me wonder if G and the higher ups have some kind of deal going on, heh.

Take a look at how many former US government employees (particularly lawyers) now have well paid jobs with Google. It makes interesting reading and it's been going on for years, particularly during the Obama days.

This alone shows that the relevance of the hits often has nothing to do with the query.

The relevance of the hits has everything to do with Google's profitability.

[ichthyous]

The only thing that has changed within this update is that sales have been vanished completly. ebay and amazon did on the other side pick up with sales.

From the 3rd onward it has been completely kaputt. Since the 3rd I have had only three new inquiries on my site. And this is with normal to high traffic until this week, when USA traffic started to trend downward. So far this week it's -17%. Europe, Canada, and UAE also lower. This is all due to Google's BS...the economy is good here, people are still spending.

[tom_010101]

My project crashed from 30,000 visitors a day to 16,000 in August 2023 and for a week it has been down to 7000 visitors a day. It's my life's work with over 30,000 blog articles but it seems it's over. :(

[Cyril TechWebsites]

Stocks are back in price. My congratulations to all of you with another robbery from Greedle!

P.S. Guys, who are facing with drop to zero again? From the start of the update, my website dropped to zero, then bounced back for a few days. amd now it's vanished from the SERPs again.

[edited by: Cyril_TechWebsites at 6:21 am (utc) on Mar 15, 2024]

[Conro]

Traffic continues to collapse and at this rate it will reach zero within a week. I just need to figure out if my site is spammy or useless. Definitely worse than the sites with automatic translation and paa that are in front of me.

[Micha]

Am I the only one whose website is experiencing a major upswing? Discover's traffic has been dead since September, but since last Friday different articles have been landing there every day and the number of visitors has shot up accordingly. Compared to the previous week, I currently have an increase of 230 percent.

Without Discover it would look like it has in the last few weeks, because very few visitors come via the "normal search".

[tom_010101]

Discover is normal. I know that. Sometimes an article is in Discover and then the visitors multiply. Only the “normal search” is decisive. Discover is just a coincidence. You shouldn't rely on it. I know this (unfortunately) too well.

[Conro]

@Micha It's good to hear that at least someone is having an improvement on traffic. I've never received any traffic from Discover, but I know it's a source that brings in a lot of traffic. Have you made any changes to your site lately in order to get more traffic from Discover? Are the visits to news articles?

[superclown2]

I'm getting wild swings with periods of masses of visits followed by near complete shutdowns. Totally unnatural.

This is the result of an ultra-greedy American company being allowed to have such a huge control over the earnings of millions of businesses throughout the world whilst it imposes it's own Google Tax on the entire Internet.

[Micha]

I realize that you shouldn't rely on Discover, but it's strange that a different article has been attracting tons of readers every day for a week now, and of course that's a bit reassuring.

@conro I cleaned out the categories two weeks ago, especially the subcategories, but nothing more. Edit: and yes, I run a pure news site without a store.

[Conro]

@Micha in what sense clean?

[Micha]

@conro I have removed many subcategories and now use more tags for a finer sorting of the topics.

[NeapTide]

So I just checked INP value for google(dot)com, the parasite making lives of people miserable and the parasite itself failed core web vitals with INP at 257ms.

Quite frankly, 90 percent of web is failing INP. I don't know what ret*rd working at Google gave the idea to make INP a core web vital. Actually your phone hardware (screen latency) is fully responsible for INP. If user phone is old or having poor quality screen, latency for interaction would be low

[einserpirelli]

INP isn't an important ranking signal anyway... so what...

[NeapTide]

Who knows what's the ranking signal these days.
But if you are launching something for masses to comply at least your own product should comply to that first.
Your own product (google) is failing core web vitals but you want others to pass them to rank better in SERPs. 😏

[ichthyous]

@conro I have removed many subcategories and now use more tags for a finer sorting of the topics.

Google doesn't index tags easily, and sometimes not at all. I find Categories and subcats get indexed and rank better, but tags rank terribly. Having said that, after this update I have noticed a lot more traffic to my tag pages and some (not all) of my major categories are withering away.

[ChrisWilson]

Last 48 hours my traffic in a non-commercial niche has almost bottomed out to the lowest it's ever seen since 2006. No manual actions, no ads on the site, and is a traditional forum.

[ghostofseo]

If Google's goal is to completely wipe my site out they are doing a great job at it. Thanks Google you have really messed things up.

[ichthyous]

-42% in USA traffic today at 2pm. Search is only down 7% though...the difference is the huge surge in traffic from UK, Europe and rest of world. Google has clearly decided to focus its efforts on stealing all the North American traffic unimpeded by any legislation. These fools going after TikTok as a threat to national security need to broaden the net and include an even bigger threat to small business posed by Google!

[christianz]

Last 48 hours my traffic in a non-commercial niche has almost bottomed out to the lowest it's ever seen since 2006. No manual actions, no ads on the site, and is a traditional forum.

Nothing good has come out of the March updates.

[Whitey]

Nothing good has come out of the March updates.

I think in about 3 weeks some good analysis and consensus will start to appear out there. How folks recover or not will be another story.

@rustybrick:

I am starting to see signs of more ranking fluctuations and volatility as of Friday, March 15th - likely related to both the core and spam updates. [seroundtable.com ]

There seems to be no let up in the volatility.

For me I'm anxious when i see wild fluctuations in impressions and indexing, that i previously thought was a GSC bug (it may still be). This is happening on sites that have not yet been hit and i take this to be a sign that those sites that have not been hit are on a marginal threshold close to a major drop.

It seems pumping out written/AI content or pSEO that ranks quickly causing accelerated traffic growth is a risky business without brand or reputation behind it. Even major sites that do this have been hit during earlier HCU updates, causing 100's (if not 1000's overall) of layoff's involving professional journalists and support staff. Check this out: [startupdaily.net ]

[Whitey]

The above link should resolve correctly to:

Finder cuts staffing for the 3rd time in a year, shedding 60 jobs [startupdaily.net ]

[Conro]

Guru seo: Affiliate links; eeat; photos, videos, write in the first person...

In the meantime, google takes it all

[twitter.com...]

[oldog]

Funny thing....a huge update ....a very small thread...
Meaning.....
Job as usual for 99,9% for the rest of webmasters...

[superclown2]

Job as usual for 99,9% for the rest of webmasters

The overwhelming majority of webmasters that I communicated with 20+ years ago are out of business. Sadly I have watched many on this site announce the same fate over the past few years.

[mosxu]

Invalid traffic for days now…

[JesterMagic]

The Reddit and Google deal has really affected the rankings of the posts in my forum for my niche. Reddit has come in an taken over my ranking position and now I am on page 2 or 3 depending on the keywords.

The best content for the keywords should rank. Ranking should not be based on deals and how well Google integrates with the content of another business or their own (like Youtube).

[RedBar]

Since the end of January my global site's traffic has been consistent and steady with no dramas of high / low fluctuations BUT real world business enquiries have fallen off a cliff edge specifically so the "West".

I have seriously been considering relocating to a more "central" country.

[ichthyous]

real world business enquiries have fallen off a cliff edge specifically so the "West"

Exactly...I was getting inquiries from the UK all of last year, but they weren't buying, now no inquiries at all from the UK even though the traffic is even higher than last year. That is also the case with Australia, Canada, the UAE and the United States. New business is effectively at zero and has been since about the 5th. On top of that USA traffic has been very low since this all started...every day traffic drops at 9am sharp and stays far below the norm.

[EditorialGuy]

Funny thing....a huge update ....a very small thread...

The responses to RustyBrick's Google update articles at Search Engine Roundtable are going nuts, with comments by the hundreds. Lots of people are furious, frustrated, and/or frightened. And why not? I've been using Google since the 1990s, and I've never seen its search results this bad.

[BlueEyes82]

@EditorialGuy

I also didn't think that there couldn't be even worse results than after the HCU update. I was hoping that Google wouldn't communicate its error to the outside world, but would fix it with the next major update. But like many others, I was probably wrong.

As has been written several times, the relevance of the results is bottomless. I don't think Google will change the whole thing in the medium term. The wrong people seem to be at the helm right now.

But I am sure that after this update, Bing will gain even more market share. The trend after the HCU update was very clear. Google will probably have to drive its business into the wall with an announcement.

[EditorialGuy]

An optimist might think (or at least hope) that, after cleaning its index of outright spam and junk sites, Google would turn its attention to restoring a modicum of quality to the remaining search results.

Then again, optimists are probably in short supply when it comes to Google's SERPs.

[Shepherd]

The vast majority of the google SERPs optimists are located in the google Ads campus. Not for long though since as bad as the SERPs are for searchers, google managed to make google Ads even worse for advertisers...

[ichthyous]

But I am sure that after this update, Bing will gain even more market share. The trend after the HCU update was very clear. Google will probably have to drive its business into the wall with an announcement.

Wishful thinking, with 90% of the market Google isn't worried about Bing search. The whoopla over AI search is already waning and it didn't make a dent in Google's share of the search market. Google can play with Ai, squeeze us to death, degrade it's own organic search results and it isn't going to matter much until some real and stringent regulation is implemented. The dummies in the US congress can barely grasp the basic concepts behind search, social media algos, AI...you really think that meaningful legislation is coming down the pike? I would think the only way it will happen is if the US bases its legislation on already existing EU or UK legislation.

[Micha]

I would think the only way it will happen is if the US bases its legislation on already existing EU or UK legislation.

Well, the legislation in the EU is not that great. Google has a lot of loopholes and even if you violate the law, there is a fine that is paid out of petty cash and that's it. Much stricter laws would be needed. It's no different to your situation in the USA: many politicians don't understand all this and Google has a lot of lobbyists in Brussels

[EditorialGuy]

I would think the only way it will happen is if the US bases its legislation on already existing EU or UK legislation.

Estimates vary, but according to one source, Google Search has a 91 percent market share in the EU and nearly 94 percent in the UK. In the USA, Google's search market share is only 87 percent. I don't know what EU and UK legislation you're referring to, but it hasn't exactly created more competition in search.

[BlueEyes82]

@EditorialGuy

A monopolist can only destroy itself and Google has been working hard on this since September.
My data shows strong gains for my websites on Bing in Germany. Many friends have also noticed in their private lives that the search results are no longer good.

If Google continues down this path, it will have major consequences in the medium to long term.

[superclown2]

An optimist might think (or at least hope) that, after cleaning its index of outright spam and junk sites, Google would turn its attention to restoring a modicum of quality to the remaining search results.

That would mean a decrease in profits and a drop in their share price - Wall Street wouldn't like that. After all that price is volatile as it is, with shareholders nervous over the failures of their AI project and the torrent of legal actions the company is facing, because of it's greed. Google is locked in a long term death spiral.

I don't know what EU and UK legislation you're referring to, but it hasn't exactly created more competition in search.

Absolutely. The problem is that, at the moment, Google has better lawyers, and their legal fund is bigger, than even governments. It won't always be this way though. There is an inevitability of gradualness.

[sk7411]

The same is happening this sunday, it's recovering lol.

[waynne]

I'm not noticing much of a drop in impressions or position in webmaster tools, but a substantially lower click through ratio, in some cases 30% lower. Geographically it seems to affect US traffic more than other regions but this has varied from day to day.

Is anyone else seeing this? I suspect PAA & YouTube links are taking the traffic in this update.

[Conro]

I see big tech sites that are having a drop in traffic. Sites that have not been touched by previous hcu and spam algo. Obviously they are excellent sites, well done and with useful content but let's not forget that for google a quality site is that bin of reddit

[Conro]

@waynne Most likely they have put you under some paa or youtube video. Check for post that receive less traffic. However, I noticed a significant drop in traffic even though the articles in my case were in the same position