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]

What I don't understand is how you can have such a major drop even for post that remain well positioned. It looks like New Year's Eve, but at least on December 31, we know why people don't visit the site anymore

[tom_010101]

On my german Page the same. The same visitors how Silvester or Christmas...

[christianz]

Poor traffic right now. Poorer than previous days.

[Fluff_Nutz]

A lot of issues may also stem from the fact they released a bunch of staff and reportedly replaced them with less experienced workers to cut costs. I also read that someone who had been working at G for over 18+yrs left due to poor working environment. So its fact that there is a lot of low morale.

Also, I have noticed that over on Youtube I can upload a video and perhaps gain traction for it, just for this exact same video to loose it whenever I come back to it. I recently looked into it and noticed that others were also reporting this issue too. G then announced that there was a delay in the real time viewing figures. However, due to this delay my channel analytic data was way below my normal average daily viewing figures. They also said that they had fixed the issue but it still persists. Is this happening to websites too I wonder?

I often notice, when ''updates'' aren't in place that one day my site can gain in traffic just for it to fall the next day. Just like Youtube the figures are not entirely stable. Its either a mix of traffic manipulation or lack of staff experience. Perhaps even both.

The only platform that G really gain any kind of income profit from is the search, so no surprise that it gets hit the hardest. Its how they manage to maintain their monopoly in the first place and perhaps why they tend to be so aggressive and greedy with it too. Since its their only real money maker and they have staff to pay still, plus courts and fines. Whilst also paying to keep their AI going and products too. Is the search generating enough to help pay everything else off? Not to mention paying tons of money to Apple and whoever else. Basically they seem to be paying a lot out and only having one real profit maker. The struggle could indeed be real.

[ghostofseo]

Google continues to get it wrong. We are watching them shoot themselves in the foot in real time.

A simple Google search for: search forums fails to even bring the Google Search Community Forum up, instead wants to show a Reddit post about Google forums?

I could go on all day like this.

On the product review side of things, Google is now showing articles from 2017, 2020, 2022 etc etc at the top of the search results. Hey Google when I search for a product, most likely I'm looking for the current version.

If someone types in xyz car review. One would think you would show content from this year vs older articles of vehicles that are not even for sale?

Round and round we go.

Hope someone brings a class action against them. This is garbage results as of late.

[SumGuy]

I can take a story title from a right-leaning news agregator and throw it into G search and get results that have twisted the meaning and the context of the title always into a heavy left-leaning result and the search results go along with that agenda. That's a big turn off for a lot of people who are sick of the left/marxist/democrat leaning G.

I take that same story title, put quotes around it, and force G to understand my search query without twisting and distorting it. More often then not, G give me this as a result:

==================
It looks like the results below are changing quickly
If this topic is new, it can sometimes take time for reliable sources to publish information
Check the source
Are they trusted on this topic?
Come back later
Other sources might have more information on this topic in a few hours or days
====================

If I want to search for a johnson rod for a '57 Chevy, sure, G can show me that. Usually. If I'm searching for more background details on current events, G has an agenda and for the first time in, ever, its on my to-do list to find an objective and unbiased replacement for G for my browser.

[Fluff_Nutz]

@GhostofSEO

Youtube is the exact same. I was searching for a specific music track the other day. I end put the name of the track and vocals and could not find what I was looking for. In fact searching for it was really difficult. Which was a surprise at first.

Also just read that the US House passes a bill that wants Tiktok banned nationwide. Why? Because of the Chinese and their potential to acquire US citizen data. That they probably already have by now but the US already have data on other nations, so that is okay. I really don't understand their reasoning behind this. 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..

Also, if Tiktok do get banned then who then provides Youtube with competition? It will be a similar situation with the G search. Tiktok being banned is like a green light for them. Not happy to be honest.

[bbc.co.uk ]

[SumGuy]

I'm seeing an increasing number of hits to my website from residential IP space (verizon, comcast, etc) that have all the fingerprints of bots, and I'm also reading about how various VPN's are using (renting) client's IP's for access to other actors, I think an example of the tiktoc app being used in this way has been posted to the robot forum here a year ago. Europe has, I believe, forced apple to allow non-apple-store apps to be loaded onto iphones. The cell phone is being leveraged for all sorts of malarcky now, they're really not telling us this wrt tiktok.

It's been said that enough financial info on Americans has leaked over the past 10 or so years that China has a financial dosier on every American.

[Whitey]

Update to our core update experience

2 ccTLDs that recovered are now going back to zero clicks and impressions.

Anyone else seeing recovery’s reversed?

[Conro]

@SumGuy I have my doubts that google is politically left-wing, much less democratic. Even though it's a multi-ethnic company, it's pretty clear that it prefers rich people like them, and a rich person can't be left-wing. Google may call itself left-wing and democratic, but the facts show otherwise.

[Mark_A]

I recall in 1999, I would put a site up, optimised for various keywords, and the traffic would come in its hundreds immediately. Nostalgia doesn't help me today though, shame and all :)

[Conro]

@Mark_A Instead, now on Google you search for how to make rosemary oil and find how to make rosemary water. This doesn't happen with Bing and neither does it with other search engines.

[Mark_A]

Hi Conro, yes, just a shame we can't persuade more searchers to move to Bing et al, perhaps they don't realise that options other than Google exist?

[engine]

@Mark_A

perhaps they don't realise that options other than Google exist?

It's locked down so that, for example, there's an effort to change from the default search. Most people can't be bothered. To them, search is search on their phone/tablet and desktop and in many cases, it defaults to G.

[Conro]

@Mark_A On your site, you could write an article on how to switch search engines in Chrome. I did, but the article was immediately buried with non-themed articles, such as "How to set Chrome as your preferred browser" or "how change search engine" (General no Chrome)

[BlueEyes82]

A website has now landed 40 (!) Google visitors from what was previously 1000+. Bing has 300 a day here now. Google no longer interests me in this page. But I've also heard that simply moving/forwarding the domain sometimes resulted in a "restoration". On average I am now in position 45 before the HCU update to 12.

[Martin Ice Web]

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.
And this not only for our sites but for all i know who are running ecom shops. Even sales on a marketplace on a big german resllers site are down.

It the same like last year. First 3 month have been ok. Then the core, HCU and what else updates came in and it got all worse.

That is what i call a quality update. With google i now have to search >3 times and can´t find what i am searching. bing is much better in this.

[JohnPoul]

here's an effort to change from the default search

It's impossible. I was trying to change the search engine on my phone. To do this, you have to find the correct URL of the search engine. Something similar to bing.com/?search ={}. And so is any search engine.

Even I didn't bother with it. And how many people do you think will want to make so many movements? To what?

[BlueEyes82]

I'm constantly using the Google search engine for work and the results are currently significantly worse than before.

What strikes me: When I search for a result, my combination keyword (2 words) is often not even in the heading of the first results, but usually in the preview text or not at all.

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

[christianz]

@BlueEyes82

Google is approaching the uselessness of YouTube search where you often can't find anything at all (if you selected some of the filters for example).

[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.