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?

[superclown2]

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

A useful site is more likely to be clicked on than a Google ad. This makes it a competitor.

[ichthyous]

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

I'm seeing an almost 80% loss in my most important category this weekend, but there is no PAA and no Youtube videos above the results. I did slip from #1 to #2 spot, but my site has a bigger and more noticeable image block. Google seems to now have taken away the large image carousels under the links completely and instead they added a small box of three images to the right of the link. This makes it much more difficult for any site to stand out.

Having said that, it's the first morning where USA traffic wasn't starting the day at -60% of normal traffic, today it's my UK traffic that is mysteriously at -60% after having held up until now without a single drop

Since this all started in early March there has been almost no new business...two new viable inquiries in 14 days. I have never seen anything like that and it would imply a major economic recession. But there is no recession here, just Google ensuring that it starves us all out and forces us to pay for ads in a desperate attempt to replace the traffic.

[christianz]

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

I think Google now labels all useful sites of size as Scaled Content. Other than YouTube and Reddit, and other whitelisted priority sites that don't have to follow any rules.

For any great website there is at least one "ranking system" that will tank it. If its not EAT, it will be Scaled Content or any other of them. This is not a problem for popup spam sites and parasite spam, of course.

[christianz]

Btw, today traffic seems especially terrible. Previous days decline has been very gradual. But it has been a decline since (and shortly before) the update was announced. This junk update showed its nature on day one, and has not evolved in any way as far as I can see.

[EditorialGuy]

I'm seeing an almost 80% loss in my most important category this weekend

We're doing better for our most important categories than for much of our other content: for the last week, traffic has been down about 49 percent for the last year for our most important topic, while traffic overall has been down about 62 percent year-over-year. Our most popular pages continue to bring in the most traffic, just less than before because of slightly lower rankings. It's hard to know how much of the problem is due to the HCU "classifier" and how much is the result of Google's UI changes (more ads, more visual clutter, and SGE above the fold).

In other words, we're currently better off than a lot of sites are, but "better off" just means "slowly hemmoraging" as opposed to "gushing blood from a slashed artery."

ADDENDUM: I should mention that the 49- to 62-percent drop hasn't been entirely due to the current Google updates. We lost a fair amount of Google traffic during the last few "Reviews" and "Helpful Content" updates. In daily comparisons since March 5, the week-over-week figures have ranged from about 15 percent up to 15 percent down (mostly down since last weekend). In other words, the current updates are affecting us negatively, but not as much as their predecessors did.

[edited by: EditorialGuy at 5:01 pm (utc) on Mar 17, 2024]

[Whitey]

Know your “frenemy”. Its technical strengths and weaknesses, wants and desires.

Some introspection of self (your sites) in the face of this onslaught will strengthen you. Aside from the injustice consider exactly why (from a technical / content viewpoint you and others were chosen to be hit. Painful as it is, it might be the light that gives you a chance to regroup.

My sense is (with notes to myself)

Google:
- is unable / doesn’t want/can’t cope with a gathering content explosion (AI/pSEO/content farms)
- doesn’t need the additional content, unless it’s new and compelling
- needs to adapt to changing search queries and user habits
- relies now on Reddit etc to educate its own AI build
- it’s own digital assets (user facing and backend) is THE GOOGLE brand that both facilitates and competes with brands to force users through their channels. Think major vertical dominance eg finance, medical/health, travel etc

What’s your fight back strategy?

Notes to myself:

- build social interaction
- better UI/UX
- provide compelling reasons to interact outside of G’s influence
- observe G’s strengths and weaknesses, and exploit the gaps
- think longer term
- focus on what your users want
- be patient as you lie in wait to have your day :)

Just my thoughts I wanted to share, for better or worse.

[edited by: Whitey at 4:59 pm (utc) on Mar 17, 2024]

[Conro]

@Whitey You can try to do what you say and that can take a few years anyway if you do everything yourself or Otherwise you can create a site like jm, with Content that maybe interests one in a billion people and in the end you get de-indexed by google anyway, However you just can't make a phone call to get indexed again in the serp

[breeks]

My website traffic is so bad that I hardly get any spam comments. Even the spammers are having a hard time finding the site. :)

[Conro]

Today there is a deafening silence

[Micha]

Today there is a deafening silence

Not only with you. Today has been a dance of death so far. Google News seems to be having problems, new articles are not being indexed and some of my top keywords have dropped from yesterday to today. So it's going to be a quiet Monday.

[Conro]

My site keeps losing traffic. I'd like to say that since it's the same for my competitors something will change, but now I've lost hope. Google Wants Us All Dead

[Micha]

Google Wants Us All Dead

For this we would first have to be known to Google and I believe that anything below the largest of the NY times does not exist for Google.

[superclown2]

Google Wants Us All Dead

No. They want us all to pay for clicks, in the forlorn hope, for most of us, of making a profit (or at least breaking even). The end result of course would be increased prices for the public as the costs are passed onto them, and the destruction of even more small businesses.

Google delenda est.

[Razorllama]

The time has come. I finally have more traffic from bing + duckduckgo than google. In fact, the total annihilation ending with last week's onset has left Google organics accounting for 30% of my overall traffic. Used to be 90%. You can guess what that means for the overall traffic drop.

Funnily enough, the last few days I had queries/purchases comparable with the times I had 4x the traffic. Bing and DDG seems to convert decently, while not nearly enough to cover the $$$ losses.

[Conro]

Before I have read some comments on reddit About seo. To confirm that it is a junk site where people write to write something, there was the comment of a guy who said that google is full of junk sites and that these updates are only made to remove them. He said that with Duck Duck Go, he immediately found what he was looking for. Will he have understood that the problem is Google and not the sites? Before, google was much better than Duck Duck Go. :D Every time I enter reddit I come out even more convinced that it is just a junk site like other social networks where people can say anything without knowing what it is talking about

[Fluff_Nutz]

Speaking of Reddit I just laughed because people still think its their own website that is at fault. If its your first time, sure you would probably think that. But on multiple hits after? Then admitting to contacting the Google support team and asking them why they were hit. Get with the programme. It's Google ffs.

I also read a likely conspiracy regarding the timing for these updates relating to the DOJ case, using these updates as basic cover ups to help their court case. Google, in general, makes me sick. This ''update'' is now scheduled to end in May too. When the results from the DOJ case comes in. Also making it a 2 month ''update'' instead of one. 99% of websites will be completely dead by then. The SERP will be like an empty echo chamber, with a mere tumble weed flying through.

I have gone from getting 2-3k views a day to a mere 300 now. But I read worse for others dropping from a million views per month to 10k. That is a huge drop. I can't express how sorry I feel for those that depend on the income from the sites to keep them going. Terrible management. The worst thing is they can get away with it and continue these updates for as long as they want. We say it will end in May but who is to say it will be any time soon? It's over.

Diversify at all costs we are fighting a loosing battle.

[Conro]

If it dropped from 1 million visits to 10000 per month, in my opinion it was a site on discover. Many of these sites have been taken out, and just as it is easy to skyrocket, it is also easy to fall to the ground.

[superclown2]

I also read a likely conspiracy regarding the timing for these updates relating to the DOJ case, using these updates as basic cover ups to help their court case.

To be honest I would have thought they would have had the opposite effect, showing how useless they are now as a search engine. Unless of course they know something we don't?

[RedBar]

To be honest my traffic has been up for several days now, Sunday was very busy and so far today at just gone 66% of the day, I've already reached my average.

March is traditionally my busiest month of the year therefore this is a pleasant surprise considering the poor finish to 2023.

[Conro]

@RedBar Had you lost a lot of traffic?

[EditorialGuy]

Food for thought: According to the Google Search Status Dashboard, Google's Spam Update began on March 5, and the rollout was expected to take"up to two weeks"--meaning that it should be finished by March 19, or tomorrow. It will be interesting to see how things have shaken out, and whether the two weeks remaining in the Core Update will have as much drama as we've seen in the last two weeks when both updates were running simultaneously.

[ghostofseo]

It's all good team, Google is saying not make any changes. Lol

[seroundtable.com...]

Sometimes you find interesting things in Google though. As I asked Barry to put himself in a publishers shoes and he stated he was a publisher, then I said actual website owner which he states he is. However this is what Google shows.

"In 2006, Third Door Media — parent company to Search Engine Land and the Search Marketing Expo (SMX) conference series — was launched by founding partners Danny Sullivan, Chris Elwell, Chris Sherman, and Sean Moriarty."

So Third Door Media is actually the owner of Search Engine Land and our friend Danny Sullivan was the founder. Maybe this is old news, or maybe people are still in bed together.

[ichthyous]

USA traffic is still very sluggish...I wouldn't call it a disaster yet, but it doesn't look like it's improving. Every day my USA traffic is finishing lower and lower. The high-traffic category pages on my site have dropped by as much as 55% in the last week. Most of that appears to be USA...international traffic is actually up quite a bit.

The strange thing is that my ranking has not dropped, and even with the higher international traffic there are zero international inquiries since the 3rd. Not one new inquiry from the UK, Canada, Australia, Continental Europe or Latin America. How Google is managing to do this is a mystery to me.

[rustybrick]

@ghostofseo - Search Engine Roundtable is NOT owned by Third Door Media, it is own by me. I am not sure why you are upset with me. I just report the news.

I have been hit by plenty of Google penalties, including a Panda penalty, link selling penalty (before there were even manual actions), etc.

I've been through plenty of this over the 20+ years of publishing content on Search Engine Roundtable.

[Micha]

Today is strange, Google only pushes me readers on very old articles, on the current ones comes zero traffic from G. Google News is also full of totally outdated articles today, hardly any new ones, no matter from which websites.

[RedBar]

@Conro

@RedBar Had you lost a lot of traffic?

Incomparison to 2010 average I have lost 99.8%, compared to 2-3 years ago average 60% and heading towards 75% however the last few weeks has seen it come back to about 55%.

If these numbers seem big bear in mind until 2010 I had millions of PVs per month viewing images and like many others lost all that traffic within 2-4 months after the Google image theft of 2010. That image theft drove me to remove thousands of images completely and re-build everything in html5.

Therefore, realistically, I can only make a valid comparison after I melded several sites together some 4 years ago.

I also like to qualify my metrics in that I do not know how much loss of traffic, especially from the USA, is due to Google "updates" and Google "localisation" of its SERPs which I do know happens a lot in my experience.

I cannot see how I can possibly get back to 100% of 4 years ago simply because of localisation in the USA plus the extraordinary quantity of ads for my top 10 keyword products. The listings may be there however they just cannot be seen for obvious reasons.

[edited by: RedBar at 10:08 pm (utc) on Mar 18, 2024]

[jchiff]

Following months of sudden decline here comes an overnight surge in traffic and adsense revenue continuing into this afternoon.

Marked safe from total annihilation TODAY :)

[Fluff_Nutz]

@RustyBrick Seems we have a celebrity in the forum then. Nice to have more experience in here. I, myself, am new to it all but I did read that the Panda update was a bad one back in the day. Anyway seeing you here does make sense as to why so much of the Search Engine Roundtable website covers what is said in these forums.

@SuperClown The post I read that from mainly mentioned that the ''updates'' of last year and this coincidentally occur on or around the DOJ court case. I'll post the link and make of it what you will.

[reddit.com ]

[superclown2]

The post I read that from mainly mentioned that the ''updates'' of last year and this coincidentally occur on or around the DOJ court case.

Google have a lot of very clever people, particularly in their legal department (many of whom used to work for the US government, but that's another story). They also have massive funds available for 'lobbying', commissions and whatever else you may wish to call it.

If they deliberately change SERPs results around court cases then that is only a fraction of the manipulation they are capable of doing. The revelations in the court transcripts should be required reading for every legislator in the world.

At the moment the SERPs here in the UK have certainly worsened since the European DMA came into effect as Google 'complies with the law' by exploiting every loophole they can find. Which, of course, they are legally entitled to do when faced with legislation that isn't watertight.

[ichthyous]

I'm also seeing a big turnaround since around noon yesterday. It seems that everything has snapped back to what it was before around the 3rd. And once again, as soon as the trend reverts the inquiries begin to pour in. It was 12 days of silence, and now multiple new inquiries in a short span of time. This endless cycle of Google squeezing the life out of businesses like a boa constrictor is getting old. How long before it reverts again, or before the next set of updates are announced?

[ghostofseo]

It's so weird after testing over 50 of our latest reviews we show up #1 in Duckduckgo for our search terms #1 in Bing for our search terms and on average now Google 24 for our search terms. Regardless of the Query we are buried into this spot.

Anyone else seeing similar results?

Clearly Bing and DuckDuckGo are not being "gamed" by my SEO tactics, they like our original content and show our content in the place it deserves to be.

Drops like this are far from normal.
[imgur.com...]
.
The above example shows how Google is trying to remove my site from search "organically" we don't have manual penalties, and unlike @RustyBrick have never ever ever even thought of buying links. I do appreciate your honest Barry, surprised the guy giving us so much advise was once involved in black hat seo.

I have done everything above board with my website. Got really good at SEO and publishing articles that stood out against any other review sites. Now Google doesn't like my website and I'm supposed to roll over and die. Not a chance.

Funny as I posted a YouTube video yesterday and it's showing at the very top for the same term as my review that's in spot $24. So I guess I'm a YouTuber now..... Or Redditor. Why doesn't everyone start their own Reddit threads and post all your content in there. It will rank better than you do now. Give it a try....

[rustybrick]

@ghostofseo I did not buy links ever. I am not sure where you got that information from. I had a blogroll section with links to sponsors before Google had the nofollow attribute and any guidelines on selling links. This was 2003, Google has no policies on any of this back then. A lot has changed over the 20+ years. I've covered almost all of those changes on that blog that is now own by Third Door Media.

[edited by: rustybrick at 9:22 pm (utc) on Mar 19, 2024]

[ichthyous]

Clearly Bing and DuckDuckGo are not being "gamed" by my SEO tactics, they like our original content and show our content in the place it deserves to be.

Honestly, I don't see how Bing is any different...I searched recently and the results were not great. My site ranks poorly in general, way below where it should be ranking for some of the terms. The same few mega sites came up over and over for all the searches...actually worse in terms of diversity of sites shown that at Google. I would love to rank better, but I can't see exactly what I might be doing wrong that my site ranks so poorly at Bing to begin with...

[Cyril TechWebsites]

I wish all Googlers to be marked as unhelpful people, and wish them to get real terms in prison for everything they did to a society.

[lesseo]

I have a global blog site that was negatively affected by this update. It experienced a drop in impressions in the September update. However, with content that has not been updated for 8 months, impressions have now dropped by 95%.

[Micha]

Last week really wasn't bad, but things have been going downhill again since Monday. The Discover traffic is at 0 and the traffic from Google is decreasing daily. Since Monday, Google seems to be ignoring all new articles. In other words, it continues to go downhill, with only a small break in between.

But that was to be expected. I would have been very surprised if the push from last week had continued, because that would not fit with Google's behavior.

[capulkit]

My 2 sites are completely dead. Main site is going down day by day.
I was first to launch few useful tools, big sites copied it and now I do not rank even in first 3 pages.

Do google ignore the original creator and award copy pasters.

[RedBar]

I have no idea what is going on however my PVs for the last 7 days are 131% and today, so far after nearly 12 hours, at 124%.

It all looks like genuine traffic from trade locations I would expect traffic. This is a continuation of traffic improvement from my low of week 8 2024, w/c Monday 19th February 2024.

Anyone else?

[rustybrick]

Sounds promising RedBar! Keep us posted.

[Martin Ice Web]

Very, very slow today. No inqueries, no emails, no calls, no SPAM, 40% drop in traffic, no sales from google traffic.

Seems like the core update is kicking in.

[Conro]

I see other new sites hit by google and having their first hcu punishment or whatever it is. Just a buggy machine Programmed by incompetents would cause certain sites that are really well-made to lose 40% of traffic.

[Dooku]

I wish all Googlers to be marked as unhelpful people, and wish them to get real terms in prison for everything they did to a society.

The average employment time of Googlers, especially since the last 5 years is only 13 months! So that guy who worked at G for 18 years(earlier thread) is one of the very few exceptions.
I watched a documentary about those famous google perks and how they are ALL designed in such a way that the only purpose of those perks are to keep googlers working for as many hours each and every day. Those perks are actually a devious way to exploit their work force.

Makes you wonder how "smart" the average googler actually is only to find out how they are exploited and worn down AFTER they are on the inside? No wonder the turnover is really horrendous at google.......

[Whitey]

Update: 2x ccTLDs that got hit, then bounced back, then got hit again.

50% of localized country traffic from 1x ccTLD has moved over to .com suggesting ccTLDs that don’t add value get the chop. That ccTLD was otherwise stable for the last 10 years or so.

That transferred country traffic isn’t consistent yet though. One day up, then nothing.

301ing the ccTLDs is tempting but I think it best to wait until the dust settles in April

[rustybrick]

The spam update finished like 30 minutes ago... core is still rolling...

[RedBar]

<slightly off-topic>
@Dooku

Whilst I have no doubt that some coders etc do get tired / bored, I have always experienced that most code monkeys (that's what we call ourselves!) generally tend to go above and way beyond the average cubicle worker mostly wanting to get it done and get it done correctly, 70+ hour weeks are very normal here and have been since the 1990s.

Is this unusual these days?

I must qualify this by stating we all live in a small market town with no one more than a 10 minute bike ride away, obviously with no city-style commuting / housing pressures.

[superclown2]

<even more off-topic>
The best work I do is lying in bed at 5.30am designing my latest project in my head. It's not counted as 'working time' though. </offtopic>

I'm still experiencing booms and busts with our traffic. I got a rush of it yesterday until about 1600 GMT and then practically nothing for the rest of the day. The SERPs looked the same, our positions for major search terms looked the same. The only explanation I can think of is that they are messing round with the cookies but I've no solid evidence of that since I delete them several times a day.

[ichthyous]

Update: 2x ccTLDs that got hit, then bounced back, then got hit again.

Same thing here...I had one day where traffic bounced back to normal and the phones were ringing. I received more new business in that 24 hours than in the previous two weeks. Yesterday late in the eve the USA traffic fell off a cliff again and is very low again today. How many days are we going to wait now...one normal day of traffic every two weeks? Soon, one normal day a month. This needs to end, Google is now the enemy of online businesses around the world...it has far too much control and it needs to be regulated as a straight up monopoly. So all those libertarians who think no regulation and no government is the solution to everything are extremely naive...only governments can dismantle monopolies. It happened in the 30's and I think it's going to have to happen again for the sake of societies everywhere.

[RedBar]

The best work I do is lying in bed at 5.30am

Whoa, you're not the only one who does that!

The amount of times I have had an "issue" and resolved it in my "sleep" and then woken up early to write it down is legend with my wife.

[Micha]

Google is now the enemy of online businesses around the world...it has far too much control and it needs to be regulated as a straight up monopoly.

That's all there is to say about Google.

[edited by: Micha at 3:39 pm (utc) on Mar 20, 2024]

[RedBar]

@ichthyous

I wrote earlier that the past 7 days my traffic was 131%, interestingly I just checked this, my USA PVs are -33.33% in that same period of overall traffic but about its normal quantity levels, for the moment the rest of the world seems to have woken-up for me.