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]

[Markedd]

@saladtosser I know quite a few people that have disabilities which work online and made enough money to get by and which allowed them to not rely on anyone else. And some of them have lost their revenue with these updates and due to the general Google search volatility. This is an issues that's not discussed enough anywhere. Wouldn't this be an interesting story for the journalists? Apparently not.

[saladtosser]

He should go to therapy I guess, but he was in therapy for the 15 years he was unemployed and it didn't work, the reason it didn't work is because it didn't tackle the problem as to why he was depressed, working was his therapy once he learned web application development and built his own site and started making an income because he no longer felt worthless, worked himself out of the problem I guess you can say!

I don't think therapy works for the type of people who know what the problem is and know what needs to change to fix it, and then do fix it through self determination/education/work! But then someone comes along after 20 years and says, nope, your not working yourself outta this, get back in the comer where you belong, we want that rent money you earn for our faceless shareholders, your government and country tax payers can pick up the bill going forward!

I suggested using his skills for web development and work remotely from home but as he pointed out AI is fast replacing these jobs as well!, plus the amount of people wanting websites in the future will go downhill if they are just paying to host it to feed chatbots. The good news is he hasn't been hit by any update so far just an overall decline in traffic from all the Google distractions/widgets PAA etc, but he knows its coming for him with SGE! I think if I was disabled on that level and my only chance of income was from home doing something Google/AI is replacing I would probably have the same mindset, living on disability benefits looking at the wall all day doesn't sound fun!

>>>Wouldn't this be an interesting story for the journalists? Apparently not.<<<<

Not only that but you would think governments around the world would be worried as that money taken from disabled will then have to come from the tax payer! Another bill for us as the tax payers to pick up off Googles chase for profits! It's odd to me countries would allow 2/3 US companies completely monopolise advertising and swallow the money....I wonder what the net gain/loss would be for countries to ban/block these sites and force users to use a search engine owned by a company in their own country!? I suspect many law makers around the world get backhanders from G in someway or another!

[edited by: saladtosser at 1:03 pm (utc) on Apr 17, 2024]

[ichthyous]

Just made $200 from a website stealing one of my photos

If you register your photos with the copyright office you can pursue these infringements for a lot more. My attorney just closed out two settlements for almost $20,000 in the last two days without even filing the cases. My cases may be particularly effective because the attorneys can see how many suits we have filed over the years so they know immediately that we are not playing around. Copyright is a one-way street...the infringer pretty much always loses unless there is some fraud involved on the part of the copyright holder. A lot of the companies that are stealing the images factor these expenses in or have insurance to cover it, but not all. If the infringer is truly small or independent I am much more prone to accepting a lower amount...often they don't realize that they are stealing images or have any clue about what infringement is. All of this is happening while Google continues to decimate sales of physical products through my website.

[mhansen]

Re: Content sites with ecommerce

I'll put in my .02 cents about niche sites with ecommerce.

In 2015/2016, I built a new site for a person who wanted a content based site for affiliate lead gen purposes. It was their specialty trade and they were just moving to the web to find a way to monetize their local offline business and expand reach. I built a basic WordPress site and populated it with the page structure to support their goals, as well as titles (only) of around 50-60 long form content blog/articles I thought would attract the attention of users they desired and funnel them to the pages for the conversion. They hired a writer to complete those pages/posts and later, opened the website to traffic. Their monetization goal was primarily lead generation, selling the leads to bigger players in the market.

A few months later they wanted to add a hybrid style drop-ship functionality to the site to sell products related to their specialty and after going back and forth, we added Woocommerce to the website with only 8-10 products, which is all they ever sold at the website. When a product sold, they ordered it, had it delivered to themselves, then repacked and shipped it out. 90% of the site was focused on informational search traffic for leads, 10% was on those 8-10 products.

Fast forward to today and the website is still running exactly as it did then. By that, I mean the theme has never been updated, the articles have never been updated and the site still sits in the EXACT same state that I left it in 8 years ago. All they have ever done is update the price on the products to match today's pricing and update plugins so they retain functionality. I talk to the owner somewhat frequently and have done several other projects for them over the years so I've kept up with the pulse of this specific site closely.

The site has done well through the Sept HCU and again throughout this march update. It rarely ever saw more than 40k visitors per month throughout it's history, but in their uber-specialty market it was enough to earn them a side income of +$8k / month between selling products and leads. That income has continued fairly steady throughout as well.

ASIDE from the products and info:

- Their phone number is prominently displayed on the website.
- Their business address is on the website. (No map or GMB page though)
- They have a link to their state business registration.
- They own everything. The products (no affiliate links) are purchased on their site. The leads are processed on their site (no affiliate banners, iframe forms, etc).

Outside of these things they are a nothing but a niche content lead-gen website with 8-10 products, but tied to a B&M local business. They even outrank Forbes for many YMYL queries.

[NeapTide]

So today very strange thing happened in 11+ years of self hosted websites.

Today hosting service just suspended my account and sent email i am using too much shared cpu and memory resources.

I emailed them the reason for that as I was mass editing older posts. They unsuspend it in an hour.

This never happened in past as i did mass editing of 20 - 30 pages at a time 100s of times. Server would sometimes throw timeout or 500 error but restore in 5 - 7 minutes.

I believe hosting companies are now seeing decline in their business and they are now keeping an eye on their live server resources and may be shutting down or slowing down servers to cut cost.

Slowing down cpu (speed in ghz/mhz is not displayed in cpanel of any shared hosting) does reduce electricity consumption.

[ghostofseo]

@ichthyous I believe you were the one that first suggested this. Turns out we can only get works protected within 90 days of publishing them via US Copyright Office. So I have an employee coming in every 3 months now to submit all of our works. We tend to publish a new article daily. Or did until this whole Google mess as of late. So there will be lots of stuff protected now and moving forward. As of now only goes back to mid Jan.

From what I have read its minimum payout 10k to max 150k per infringement.

We will catch some brands robbing the piggy bank soon enough. And for the ones that used my stuff before it was "officially" protected, were getting content removed from Google, there host, publicly shaming on Linkedin, Twitter and Insta and sending invoice, albeit small for the photos used.

Normally we sell a package of 50 photos from around $2k, so I figure $200 a photo is a start. The 10k-20k+ payouts will come soon. Is your attorney a copyright specialist?

[superclown2]

But here's the thing: You put all your energy into a project, give your life meaning and a company takes that away from you.

This is of course what happens when a single ultra greedy company is allowed to dominate such a vital resource as search. If they were there because they are currently (as they used to be, but are no longer) the best available then that's fair enough, but now they hold their monopoly by virtue of the money they can spend to exclude competitors, whilst their search quality continues to deteriorate in order to maximise their income.

I see that the funds available to the USA antitrust regulators have been reduced! The fact that most of the legislators who voted for this either get 'campaign funds' from big tech companies or hold shares in them is of course purely coincidental.

[saladtosser]

Once SGE is released, assuming its a success and Google adds billions to their yearly profit margin and can answer every informational query. Lets assume it all goes to plan, I suppose they will *then* need to work out where they can make more money from at that point? They cant just stop and say that's enough correct? Shareholders and all that!

What do you guys think the next target/move will be? I would guess they will need to go into trying to become an Amazon type fulfilment centre? Eventually all products will have to be sold through them to take a cut from every sale? Any ideas where they will next turn after informational queries have been completely digested?

[superclown2]

Any ideas where they will next turn after informational queries have been completely digested?

Nearly every venture that Google has attempted, that isn't related to search/advertising, has turned to dust. Their other bets have collectively lost billions.

They are currently betting the farm on AI. The failure rate of AI startups is shocking, and investment in it worldwide fell by 20% in 2023 compared to the previous year. Like their 'driverless car' (how much would that division sell for now? Would anyone buy it at any price?) it is very useful for a number of applications but unless it is fed perfect data it can never be relied on and it is incredibly expensive to run.

It seems the whole world is determined to bring Google down and Japan is just the latest company to throw it's hat into the ring. It is only a matter of time before they are tamed by legislation.

If Google loses it's monopoly of search I wouldn't give much for it's chances of still being a profitable company ten years from now.

[NeapTide]

Bringing google search down isn't so simple. Android got 80 percent+ market share and google search engine is integrated into every phone.

This is the kind of monopoly google is taking advantage of at the moment.

Quite frankly google should stop shoving SGE and AI in normal search results because it will work for time being but once majority of websites are shutdown there won't be much fresh data left to steal from. Note that not every topic could be covered by reddit and quora and some top forums. People do not make money from these platforms and eventually get fed up and stop answering queries.

Quora is now just full of trolls. I get email notifications of very silly questions that I don't even bother to answer.

[ghostofseo]

Bing vs Google what are you seeing?

In Bing my Average position for 1000 articles is is 6.9 in Google 24.6 that's a whole heck of a lot of difference there.

[Whitey]

If Google loses it's monopoly of search I wouldn't give much for it's chances of still being a profitable company ten years from now.

I can't see Google losing it's search monopoly in the foreseeable future ( who and how would it be replaced?).

What can influence adjustments to it's behaviours, is multi jurisdictional legislation and it's income. I'm sure G is on it's toes with these things already, trying to anticipate the next law suit, government legislation, or interfering technology that will clip a % off it's earnings.

[ichthyous]

@ichthyous I believe you were the one that first suggested this. Turns out we can only get works protected within 90 days of publishing them via US Copyright Office. So I have an employee coming in every 3 months now to submit all of our works. We tend to publish a new article daily. Or did until this whole Google mess as of late. So there will be lots of stuff protected now and moving forward. As of now only goes back to mid Jan.

Works must be registered within 3 months of publication in order to be considered "registered timely". You can still register them after that point, and should...but you won't be able to claim damages. Honestly, when will an infringer ever know when you first published it?

From what I have read its minimum payout 10k to max 150k per infringement.

There is no minimum. It's what you accept as a negotiation to settle the matter, and what the infringer is willing to pay to settle it without going to court. If it does go to court the judge can give you damages up to 150k max, or $5. It depends on the merit of the case. Please be advised that you will need to prove the value of the work with invoices charges to clients, income statements, revenue etc. You can't just expect a judge to give you thousands of dollars when you can't prove your copyrighted work earns that kind of money normally. The premise is that the infringer is depriving you of revenue, they would have had to pay you X for the same use they are stealing, and you had better be able to prove it or the judge won't take you seriously. It's best to speak to an attorney about it.

We will catch some brands robbing the piggy bank soon enough. And for the ones that used my stuff before it was "officially" protected, were getting content removed from Google, there host, publicly shaming on Linkedin, Twitter and Insta and sending invoice, albeit small for the photos used.

Normally we sell a package of 50 photos from around $2k, so I figure $200 a photo is a start. The 10k-20k+ payouts will come soon.

The amount you will be given will be partly dependent on what you actually charge. If in your case the same infringer is using multiple images is will be much easier for you. But if the actual value per photo is $40 you will not get tens of thousands of dollars for one infringement. In my case, I have verifiable invoices to clients for tens of thousands of dollars to license one image. I have 20 years of sales invoices for high dollar values, so I can prove the value of the images to paying customers. Again, an attorney will advise you about your cases and potential returns. For low dollar value items you can also try the new Copyright Small Claims Court...you don't need an attorney for that, you file the case yourself.

Is your attorney a copyright specialist?

Yes, they all are. You will need a copyright specialist...copyright law is complex and you can't trust attorneys who haven't practiced it. I have different attorneys for each USA jurisdiction as in the USA we have numerous federal circuits. Then I have UK, EU, Australia and Canada. I am looking for ones in the UAE now as well

[Conro]

Basically I always find the same sites now + useless forums with answers from 10 years ago that were not needed at the time, let alone now. I've never seen such crap from Google

[Whitey]

@Conro - I think Google understands that what we like and don't like as site owners and stakeholder is irrelevant to the consumer that G ultimately relies upon. Reddit, Quora etc are useless "gossip" to us.

But G knows people like to interact with gossip. Heck, there's billions of searches on "gossip" every day almost. Already the web is awash with BS, mind numbing news, propaganda and marketing speak, for example. As Google CEO Eric Schmidt in 2008 referred to the Internet as a “cesspool” at the annual American Magazine Conference, I would say, it still is, but on a different level. And you (tech giants) enabled it for your own benefit and convenience.

However, If business folks are going to survive in marketing their product and services, they are going to have to forget about SEO as a main focus item supporting their business'. Branding is at the nexus' of all success. It's what you're know for. It sets you apart.

So, once business' are agile enough and technology supported, they need to engage their customers with community focus, outstanding "hero" products or services, talkable brand stories, community engagement. It works even on a B to B level. The "community flywheel" is well documented and long since proven online, which is what I am referencing for these comments.

Chasing old style paradigms of SEO (outside of the technical fundamentals) is dead. So is protesting and complaining as a priority of effort (even though i think Google isn't doing the right thing, ethically, by abandoning and not informing webmasters sufficiently well, subsequently causing pain, shock and hardship to 10's of 1,000's, maybe more).

IMO , SEO must evolve fast to be a part of this new environment. But not the product/marketing lead, rather the supporter and enabler of the business. This requires a shift of thinking approach. And definitely, new ideas and creativity, which has to move nimbly. The rest then becomes academic.

In this context Steve Jobs was famously quoted:

“Some people say, "Give the customers what they want." But that's not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, "If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, 'A faster horse!'" People don't know what they want until you show it to them. That's why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.”

[Conro]

@Whitey I highly doubt that people like to read forums, In fact, they were unobtainable until last year, precisely because they were deemed to have poor quality content. When I read a forum it is to know an opinion of others, which is not necessarily right or wrong. Now forums with their unprofessional language are good for training ai (how reddit and quora). Talking about seo now makes no sense, you will be easily overtaken by paa, forums, YouTube, reddit. Branding is something invented by seos to keep making money from the naïve, who knows why if it's so important they only talk about it now and have never done anything to make a site become a brand, but just make it rank well on Google, often tricking google

[superclown2]

I'm seeing a lot more ads today with multiple boxes, each box containing a different related search term. To many people they could look like organic results from different web sites but they are not, they are still part of the same ad, pushing the real generics further down to oblivion. Clever, eh?

I can't see Google losing it's search monopoly in the foreseeable future ( who and how would it be replaced?)

You may well be right and if they do lose it I reckon it would take several years at least.

However I remember the days when the kings were Altavista and Yahoo. Altavista was destroyed by superior search results, Yahoo (which was more a cluttered portal than a search engine) at least partly by Google's clean and easy to use interface.

Google no longer offers the best results and their interface is now horrible. Mind you Bing's search page looks like it was designed by a committee in 1996; it amazes me that a company with their money and technology cannot produce better than that. Perhaps their designers need to read some of the old Dale Carnegie books and study the KISS principle.

In the meanwhile I am encouraging anyone who will listen to switch to DDG. Most of them didn't even know it existed beforehand.

[Conro]

@superclown2 From a visual point of view, I don't like that gray as a background at Bing. It gives it an old-fashioned look

[ghostofseo]

@whitey - Bing is working how Google did a few years ago, auto complete actually shows what you want and all my articles are in top spots. Eventually if the public notices a difference in Bing they will switch.

Did we ever think Myspace would go away, nope but something better came.
Did we ever see Facebook numbers going down, nope but something better came.

@ichthyous appreciate you! Spoke to a copyright attorney in my town that's representing Nat Geo photographers, was nice but also word on the street is he's a dick which might be good for getting some cash out of these brands. He's willing to work on a percentage of the settlement, nothing else needed.

Already getting brands to pay a few hundred for photos, which is a start. But hoping we can go after a few of the major ebike manufactures that copied my photos, entire review and in turn Google gave them credit, as source and my pages of those article and photos have been removed from Google essentially. I believe that's different for damages. Or better yet if Google saw all the copy cat articles and hit me with a recent update and traffic loss which equals revenue loss maybe there is an angle there too.

I just published a review last night, and per the attorney rec registered the 10 photos I used as unpublished before I hit publish. I would be willing to bet the farm on the fact people will want to poach these photos, they are some of my best yet!

Ps How the HECK do I screen grab quotes like you are doing here? :) lol

[not2easy]

Hi ghostofseo and welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

Ps How the HECK do I screen grab quotes like you are doing here?

That welcome link opens in a new tab and offers quick help on how things work.

For quotes, use the preview button (next to the submit button) to open a text editing tab with formatting tools. ;)

[Billy85]

@whitey

I can't see Google losing it's search monopoly in the foreseeable future ( who and how would it be replaced?)

I wouldn't underestimate how fast things can change.
A couple years ago nobody thought there would be another app for short content that would become larger than Instagram. 3 years ago nobody thought of ChatGPT.
The opportunity for a new search engine to rise has never been better.

I don't think it will be one of the current search engines to rival Googles monopoly.
It will be either a new start up with much better AI based technology and a much better product or a big player like Apple or even Elon.
I think Google would lose instantly 30% of their market share, if Apple released a good search engine of its own.

Google is like Boeing. Stock at an all time high, but dysfunctional (and overly greedy) from the inside.

[NeapTide]

@Billy85+

Google sends corporate bribes to Apple to make Google search a default search engine on Safari. Do you really think Apple would be willing to make a new search engine and stop getting bribes from Google?

Google also threatens to cancel license of android phone manufacturers if they don't install a default Google search widget or integrate google search into device.

So you see my friend, this is the monster we are working with. We kept our mouths shut because we were somehow making good money too. But now Google has kind of dumped us with their extreme levels of core updates. These updates only benefited google. Their stocks shot up. While we are slowly slipping down into oblivion.

If Google claims that our websites are bad then Google SERPs at the moment are bad too. You can't just blame people while never fix your own crap.

[NeapTide]

Priorities:

[fortune.com...]

While webmasters are suffering Google is busy in firing its own employees and signing new contracts with..............!

[superclown2]

Google sends corporate bribes to Apple to make Google search a default search engine on Safari. Do you really think Apple would be willing to make a new search engine and stop getting bribes from Google?

Apple aren't the only ones benefitting from Google's 'generosity'!

However; banning this sort of monopoly-maintaining tactic is high on the priorities of legislators in the USA, Europe and the UK who are determined to trim Google's sails. Apple etc may soon have no choice.

Never say never! Google Delenda Est.

[Micha]

To be honest, I don't think Google will lose its power and it will cost us all dearly.

I read a tweet on X yesterday where a site owner described how he had given up because of Google. There was also a comment saying that Google can't judge niche sites and therefore automatically ranks them poorly. I couldn't agree more. Unfortunately I can't find the tweet anymore, I would have liked to link it.

I also disagree with Google's statement that they base their rankings on user interests. That is nonsense. Even though we know Google is a data octopus, the company will never know so much that it can predict users' search intentions. Google only claims the right to determine what users get to see, and since all ranking systems are crap, this company determines the flow of information to a very high degree. Incidentally, I don't understand why the current problems caused by Google's arrogance are not being picked up by the media. After all, the economic damage is now very great and is becoming ever greater.

You could argue that it's a private company, but it's not that simple with this market power.

[Ingall]

@Micha I read this tweet too. I think you mean this one [twitter.com...]

I completely agree with you on all points. The main problem is actually that Google cannot judge the quality of the content and therefore relies on other signals (authority through backlinks).

Google should not call these updates HCU updates but rather Authority updates.

These sites can publish and rank the most garbage, even though there probably isn't a single user who finds this garbage helpful.

[Micha]

@ingall Thanks, that's exactly the tweet I meant and I know the site they are talking about, I found it quite helpful.

[Martin Ice Web]

There was also a comment saying that Google can't judge niche sites and therefore automatically ranks them poorly.

There is an error in this sentence. Instead of "google can´t judge niche sites" it has to be "google doesn´t want to judge niche sites right"

We all know, if there is a filter lifted for a few minutes traffic and conversions are flowing in. As soon as this filter is applied again traffic and converions are gone immediatly.
google isn´t broken or anything like that. google want to have it this bad because this is good for them. free is bad, paying is good.

in mandelorian: this is the way

[Conro]

Elon musk wrote...

[twitter.com...]

[ichthyous]

This week I have seen a strong recovery in traffic, with search traffic up every day since Monday. My ranking has only improved slightly. From all this new traffic, not one inquiry. People are anxious to see if there will be a wider war in the middle east and the markets are selling off as well.

Let's see how soon it is before google announces another months-long series of updates which makes all the traffic vanish for us again.