April 2024 Google Search Observations

[Whitey]

@Micha

To me it looks more like the leading media outlets have too much trust from Google and the automated rating systems downgrade the trustworthiness of other sites because of this. But of course I can only speculate.

Could be. A contact of mine is complaining that Reddit is outranking the source content in their observations.

@EditorialGuy

My experience has been the opposite. In the current update, and especially in the last couple of weeks or so, our informational travel site's top pages seem to focus even more on "topical authority" than usual. Currently, the top 10 pages are almost always about [Destination 1] + [our most popular subtopic] and [Destination 2] + [our most popular subtopic].

A travel related site that I monitor uses a similar technique. It is ad heavy to the point of being a pain to enjoy reading the good content, but the content itself is about [Destination 1] + [popular subtopic's]. The traffic to this site grew very strongly since 2018 as content was added. Articles did not all rank straight away, but let's say 1 in 3 or 4 went straight into the top 10 within days or a few short weeks.

I wonder if these types of sites could be vulnerable to the ongoing march on AI where images, and subject matter can be written on all subjects and referenced to "headline authorities" (ie brand, Reddit's etc). Topical authority may be playing 2nd place to just "authority" in the eyes of G.

Again, just me saying as I don't know.

PS I think the current guidance from G is way too vague. Folks deserve not to be blindsided by this incredible life changing effect on business without a better level of accountability for webmasters to respond to. G is so pervasively dominant in the business World it needs to be brought into line with a better level of transparency IMO.

[edited by: not2easy at 12:28 pm (utc) on Apr 1, 2024]
[edit reason] April thread split cleanup [/edit]

[EditorialGuy]

That's OK when you have a choice of shops to go to. When it's the only one in town it's highly unethical.

By and large, corporations are guided by law, not ethics. If it's legal for Google to bribe Apple (or for Apple to extort Google), then that's what's likely to happen,

Still, imagine the search landscape if Apple's search didn't default to Google. If my own site's statistics are any guide, there are huge numbers of iOS/Safari users out there, and I wonder how many of them would make the effort to switch to Google if Apple's default search were sourced elsewhere.

[superclown2]

I wonder how many of them would make the effort to switch to Google if Apple's default search were sourced elsewhere.

The power of the default is great. I doubt if many would change it if the source was a decent, proper search engine.

True; most people move from MS's Bing engine as quickly as they can but looking at the confused mess it has always been who could blame them?

[RedBar]

This weel, more or less as expected, my global traffic has resorted to Jan/Feb levels. "Western" levels of business enquiries poor, the "South" seems to be doing well.

[ghostofseo]

Traffic and clicks, all time low 4/18

Wonder why? Brands like CNN, Forbes, Good Housekeeping and Travel and Leisure are all outranking me for my best snowboards roundup I have done annually for the last 8 years. As someone living in a ski town that rides.

You know those sites have authority, and credibility, and expertise, and first hand experience to be the authority of all things snowboarding. My best of list are done, that's ok we still do actual product reviews better than most. However you have to go to Bing.com to find them.

[Conro]

I was wondering if anyone had ever seen a site more spammy than Google

[Billy85]

It's especially ironic because they talk about UX all the time.
From all tech companies, Google's and YouTube's ads are the most annoying and they probably have the worst algorithms. I never even considered clicking on one of their ads, while Insta & Facebook showed me a couple product ads that I actually ended up buying.

[Micha]

I have just read that traffic from Google is increasing for many shop operators, but that sales are falling drastically in some cases. Does this also apply to shop operators here?

[RedBar]

I was wondering if anyone had ever seen a site more spammy than Google

However, is it a conventional website or, as it has been for years, a classified ads portal?

We all know the answer to that one, well, ought to, therefore mentally we have to accept that it is not going to change in the foreseeable future and we have to move on from what we have to tolerate ... It's very similar to living with an abusive partner, it doesn't matter how nice you are to them, except in extraordinary circumstances they are never going to change their ways and attitudes.

[Conro]

That's why you need to clean up your sites of content you think unhelpful and why you need to write articles that get straight to the point. So we can copy paste more easily with our fake AI
[twitter.com...]

[Sodero18]

@Ingall That graph is the same for 90% of websites. I can compare our website traffic graph with two sites that are very similar to ours and they are exactly the same downward trend. You're right the economic impact is staggering.

[Whitey]

I’m wondering if Google’s March Core Update is going to plan or not. The results and declared timing seem unstable.

On 5th March 2024 it was scheduled to finish inside 1 month. [status.search.google.com...]

Any update / news, anyone?

[Conro]

@Whitey Google is still de-indexing the web, you have to be patient. Anything that has been copied and can be rewritten from sge can be deindexed

[muniz900]

But will there be a new core update from Google in May?

[Micha]

@muiz The update on 5 May is a "website reputation abuse" and is intended to affect websites that exploit ranking factors of third-party websites to improve their search ranking. It also concerns websites that violate the spam guidelines. It is therefore not a core update and also not a fully automated update. According to Danny Sullivan, there will also be more manual measures.

And since we are talking about Google, we can assume that there will be a bloodbath, especially among small websites.

@Whitey Google has not yet commented on this, but given the current volatility, I suspect that they are readjusting. However, what Conro has written is also quite possible.

[Conro]

@muniz900 yes. 5 May

[Conro]

I just found a site that was affected by September by hcu. He got to work right away and created paa content. Initially it recovered a bit, it had a big increase in keywords ranked but the increase in traffic has been minimal compared to before, plus the PAA responses seem to be manually controlled, although it will surely have used AI, but it seems that now google has hit again and the traffic is plummeting again. I'Maybe you really need to create content that isn't absorbable by sge

[RedBar]

@muniz900 yes. 5 May

Hahaha ... Yep, my biggest G hit was 05/05/05 ... It took Tedster and I several weeks to resolve ... Tedster (?), legendary moderator here.

[Shepherd]

Someone should train an AI model with all of Tedster's conversations...

[RedBar]

Ouch, my global site has fallen off the cliff edge this morning, it's first 12 hours have been 20% of 2023 average.

[Sodero18]

So the May 5 update is supposed to stop the misuse of third-party websites? Could that somehow be related to Reddit? Google is a major stakeholder in Reddit now and it seems some webmasters have tried to use Reddit to direct traffic to their site when it dropped off a cliff.

[Markedd]

It's fascinating to see the utter love that my videos get from Google, pushing them at the top of the SERP (yes, the Google Search..), above everyone else, while the articles that are the same as the video are not even indexed. I am a bit at a loss of words.

[Conro]

@Markedd Video and written content must coexist together. On your site I would put the YouTube embed video right after the title, then the written text. At the moment, in my opinion, it's a winning combination

[Markedd]

@Conro I have done that for a few articles, but I don't really see the point now. The website lost 96% of traffic and new articles aren't even indexed. I create them simply because some people from YouTube want to read the script, and I do also have a tiny hope that Google will collapse, so the website may shine again in the future over its ashes.
At the same time, one may ask themselves whether this was not intentional. People that were creating valuable, unique content to be forced out of their own platform and migrate onto Google's platform, YouTube..

[ichthyous]

Big drop yesterday eve and continuing today. USA, Au and CA all way down. UK up hugely and rest of world seems stable. Last week was pretty stable for usa traffic but UK was down hugely. That's the new reality...traffic will always be pushed down by Google on a rotating basis I think

[Conro]

@Markedd I remember in September, seo personalities popping up like mushrooms saying they were signing up on YouTube to create videos

[Micha]

Sunday saw a slight increase, yesterday too, today: my site is currently being overrun. Many keywords have recovered and it seems as if we are finally appearing in Discover again (otherwise I can't explain the amount of visitors in the early morning).

On the other side is my friend's shop. His rankings are also recovering, but the visitor numbers are poor, which is also confirmed by the Search Console. The impressions have increased significantly, but the clicks have fallen sharply.

[Markedd]

@Conro They knew something I didn't back then, apparently.

[RedBar]

A poor Monday for my global site at 70.4% v April average so far, traffic has been at this level since Thursday 18th April, until then all was ok, did I miss something?

[sk7411]

looks like something has been shifting from April 21st again . Down !

[renatovieira]

Yesterday huge drop in all niches on my sites. Today it seems worse. Everything absolutely dead today...

[christianz]

April 20, 21, 22 was good. Late 22th and today there seems to be a drop, especially for my secondary site. But not catastrophic yet.

Top 3 rankings very slowly are going down. Lower position rankings slowly increasing.

[ChrisWilson]

Absolutely dead today for me.

[ghostofseo]

Will May 5th total wipe us off the face of Google, or perhaps we get some traffic back? I'm not very hopeful for anything in the Google camp these days.

[ghostofseo]

Google Search is the worst it's ever been. Full of YouTube, Reddit and Linkedin and then spam AI content. yet today Google's stock is at an all time high, while their core product Google Search is functioning at an all time low.



This is not sustainable. You will see the end of Google in real time. Mark my words here....

[Shepherd]

Don't get too caught up in the "google search is the worst" "google is broken"... google search is working perfectly for google.

The only thing that may hurt google in the long run is that they have gotten so good at extracting every dime out of Ads the ROI for advertisers is ridiculously bad.

[Conro]

I see the old sites that I have known for many years disappeared and in their place shops with guides, big brands, forums. A sadness that just looking at the names of the sites on the list makes me want to get out of google.

[Whitey]

@Conro

shops with guides, big brands, forums

I'm seeing these same poor results and experiencing wild fluctuations in traffic still.

Many good, quality and informative niche sites with excellent UI/UX, from "small players" are gone. I'd have called them more useful than many of the current sites. Just because Google think users like these because they click on these "useless" sites because they are simply there, doesn't fill me with confidence that Google has got this right.

Still no comment from Google on the March Core update [status.search.google.com...] - very frustrating

[jchiff]

Google-bashing? Or a pointed look at what's actually happening?

[wheresyoured.at...]

Meanwhile, here's hoping those kid search geniuses I imagine working in a garage somewhere pick up the pace.

www.wheresyoured.at The Man Who Killed Google Search This is the story of how Google Search died, and the people responsible for killing it. The story begins on February 5th 2019, when Ben Gomes, Google's head of search, had a problem. Jerry Dischler, then the VP and General Manager of Ads at Google, and Shiv Venkataraman, then

[Treud]

Since the start of the update (late February), I've seen a huge increase in various bots, and also zombie traffic, no conversions, and no inquiries. The raw traffic is back to normal (getting better for 2 weeks), but no idea what sort of customer Google is sending me.

Seems people who rely on views to get ads revenue are tanking, and shops are just being replaced by bigger websites.

Personally, using Google I also notice a drop in quality, too many widgets with more out-of-topic answers, Reddit, and Quora are super high in ranking with no better quality in answers too.

[Conro]

Something has been going on in the last few days. I see the same trend for several sites: at first glance there seems to be a minimal loss of keywords, while traffic has plummeted by as much as half. I take a closer look and a lot of important first positions that were carrying traffic have been lost. At this rate, there will be very few surviving sites left

[superclown2]

I see the old sites that I have known for many years disappeared and in their place shops with guides, big brands, forums.

I reckon the problem lies with the Google cookie. Click on a SERPs link to a site and that whole website seems to be more authoritative (at least as far as you are concerned) for just about anything in Google's eyes. It rises up the SERPs you see (which can be completely different from those seen by someone who routinely deletes cookies) for search terms it really has no expertise in, which encourages even more clicking on the site.

Multiply this hundreds, thousands or even millions of times and you can see why Google's reliance on click numbers (which was admitted during the trial) creates such poor search results as sites that have mass appeal, but no specialist knowledge or in-depth information, soar above smaller sites run by real experts with quality content.

Click numbers reign supreme. This is why big companies can afford to lose heavy money on non-performing ads, secure in the knowledge that the loss-making clicks will push them further up the organic SERPs. It's a mathematical balance between giving a fortune to Google, versus squeezing out competitors. Most businesses would go bust following a tactic like that but certain large concerns with big advertising budgets can make it work for them.

[saladtosser]

Whats happened to DS recently? He's gone awfully quiet!? Hiding from the twitter bashing? Analysing his life choices? On another vacation?

[Micha]

DS is angry because Reddit deletes his posts ;)

[Conro]

@saladtosser DS how JM He makes a better impression by being quiet. They used to say to close everything why had already chosen who to bring visitors to, instead of giving false hope. We're not as stupid as they think.

[Markedd]

@jchiff Thank you for this analysis which pretty much shows how there is no future for Google and no hope for site recoveries. Don't want to be a doomer, but the current management at Google can only bring the search engine to the ground.

[Dooku]

Google-bashing? Or a pointed look at what's actually happening?

No, it's not "G bashing", its just that there are too many "What is thy bidding, My Master?" types from certain regions at the helm of many tech companies. Who needs an enemy when you have people like Prabhakar Raghavan running the #*$! show?

This problem is far more serious than many people think, it's not the bad search results as that is only one of the symptoms. The actual problem is a complete rot in mentality and lack of a moral compass from people elbowing and lying themselves into decision making management positions.

[londrum]

I'm in the process of redesigning my site to remove google adsense & analytics completely. It's got to the stage where affiliate sales have overtaken adsense, which has never been the case before -- ever since their RPM switchover in February -- so I figure i can put the impressions to better use.

[superclown2]

Don't want to be a doomer, but the current management at Google can only bring the search engine to the ground.

With all the legal issues facing them their end should come fairly soon. However the power of 'lobbying' is great.

I wonder how many ex-US government lawyers now work for Google?

[saladtosser]

@Micha if DS quits just before or after SGE and goes for a different job will you still have the level of respect for him or is he just jumping a sinking ship? Does he need to jump before, during or after the ship sinks to have props from the search community? I kinda see DS as the guy who was dammed if he did and dammed if he didn't at this point, as soon as he took them 20 piece of silver from Google his reputation was over! I mean, when SGE launches hes done right? We don't need a search Lie-aison at that point? He cant go back to SEL either because the visitors that own the 100-500 sites left in the world that have significant traffic wont need to visit SEL, SEJ, SER in high enough numbers for them to keep their servers going either..If I were SER. SEJ.SEL I would go down with this ship before it hits the SGE cliff that's clearly coming, as at least you have some kinda honour to say you saw the cliff coming and did everything you could to avoid it, and some respect from your users before its 2 late! Once you hit the cliff you saw coming its another story, you didn't call it, who rates the Titanic captain! Steer your flock SER,SEL, SEJ! Would love to be a fly of DS vacation getaway or next star wars convention you see him at...........next week then!

[ichthyous]

Yesterday huge drop in all niches on my sites. Today it seems worse. Everything absolutely dead today...

Massive drop at 9am sharp today, a 75% drop in visits between 9am-2pm so far. All of that is USA traffic, which is down 33%. UK, AU, CA, UAE, Germany are all up.