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]

[Conro]

Now we will have to put up with all the solutions of the seo gurus that will never coincide with each other. However, it is better to listen to as many as possible, maybe someone really guesses correctly

[oldog]

After 45 days ! Game Over ....now what?
A new Game that will last forever ?

[EditorialGuy]

I"d hate to be the AdSense or Google Ad Manager executive who has to justify his/her falling ad revenues from third-party publishers.

[Conro]

@EditorialGuy Google tells you whether or not someone clicked on the ads or how many views were made, as I mentioned with them it's all about trust. They will have to justify the zero or almost zero ROI to those who invest with Google ads. Now google ads after the latest changes is even more of a waste of money, it's good maybe for branding, not for immediate sales. Of course, in my opinion

[Conro]

@Oldog are you zero visits? What kind of site do you have? Look at the serp, maybe you find yourself with YouTube videos and paa in the first position and you have lost traffic for this reason

[waynne]

I was hoping we could discuss observations on this Corepocalypse update and trends noticed after our "impact statements"?

My Sob Story = I've lost 4 SEO clients who are closing their brick and mortar stores, a loss of 16 jobs, I'm closing a number of useful resource sites I have built over the last 20 years primarily because they don't cover their hosting and maintenance costs

But we could all go on for pages with lists, moans and whinges on the devastating impact of this "update". But this is life, the Florida Update had a similar impact and we all moved on. With complex AI on the horizon the idea of people using the internet to surf for information is a thing of the past.

I have seen =

1) Some very high quality pages slip to position 6-9 for phrases "looking for guides on", "how to use", "why should I fit... " which is pretty pointless (outranked by box shifters and stores selling the product rather than information about & how to use and comparison reviews on the topic). When there are so many above SERP position 1 ad slots and info boxes they get very little attention.

2) Some small businesses with minimal SEO have remained rock solid in both position and traffic, but many have seen dramatic drops. The loses seem to be anyone in a remotely competitive industry. If you build pink spotted pet hats you'll be just fine! Builders, traders and shops have all seen drops.

3) Competing sites that have plagiarised content, AI generated and the higher quality "info spam - SEED PICKER" affiliate sites have been nuked, no where to be seen.

4) The quality of leads provided from SERPS is very poor in all industries I watch.

I predict a major economic downturn based on the results I have seen from the sites and client sites I manage. I feel this update is twofold, firstly a way to show more ads, & more google properties, or PAA and the other to remove as many low quality pages as possible. The day of making easy money is over, we now have to actually earn it unless we start a major search engine!

When people get sick of Ads on YouTube, sponsored Serps and are generally unable to find what they need, they will look to other means and providers of information.

[Micha]

@Wayne It's normal to complain, the frustration has to come out.

But it's important to share observations, that's true. So on the whole, I can agree with your observations. It's similar in the German-speaking countries.

One thing I have noticed is the "advertising" point. I could observe that after some websites (including mine) changed the placement (more text before the first ad banner), the articles ranked better. All these websites do not use Google advertising, but use their own ad server.

However, I don't see an economic upturn, rather the opposite. Because what you are accusing Google of presupposes equal treatment and, to be honest, I don't see that. When I look at my customers, I see the absolute opposite in the ranking, good texts have no chance because certain players automatically rank well, no matter how bad an article is.

When I compare searches for a keyword with different search engines, the results on Bing, DuckDuckGo etc. look significantly different and more importantly more relevant.

Where I definitely agree, or more accurately, what I'm hoping for, is what you write about people being fed up.

[Billy85]

SERPs have become such a joke.
It's almost as if G ranks anything over a site that has been deemed "unhelpful", whether its better, worse or even relevant.

I can only speak for my niche, but when I see the SERPs for some long tail keyword articles I wrote and the content that outranks my pages, I can only laugh.

Whether my content is the most helpful or less helpful, my articles at least tackle the query and provide an answer, whereas the other pages that outrank me have either no relevance or barely have anything to do with the topic. (and reddit isn't even in SERPs in my niche in Germany)

Traffic has also become even worse in the past week with mostly zombie traffic where my site probably ranks for some unrelated or irrelevant stuff.

[Conro]

Yes, in practice, google has become like the poor search engines of the past and to which you asked one thing and brought you other results. It's as if the first page of yesteryear has been removed and you go straight to the second or third page. For example If I ask how to polish the body of a car, I would like to know the process, not the name of a wax that sells an ecommerce. Today I noticed that after the first 5 google irrelevant results I switched to Bing and the answer was featured

[Micha]

Yesterday was a record day for my website, thanks to Discover, but today is the usual slow day.

My friend's store has been hit pretty hard. Traffic is up, but sales have dropped to an absolute minimum since the weekend, the whole of last week was really bad though. The only thing that has increased is the number of spam messages via the contact form. He won't be able to keep this up for much longer.

[superclown2]

The only thing that has increased is the number of spam messages via the contact form. He won't be able to keep this up for much longer.

Change the URL of the contact form and mark it noindex. Change the names of any associated files that relate to the contact form, and that spammers might search for. It won't eliminate spam but it will cut it down considerably.

[Treud]

-40% and stabilization since 3 days, traffic seems better quality, bandwidth is up (people looking website) and i receive some requests !

[NirthaK]

@Billy85 It happened to my site too. My site is made for the DACH-area. There is no reddit in my niche but only big brands and really big blogs have survived.

[universenet]

Few websites will be visible in google search soon
reddit
quora
pinterest
...and few more .. and that will be internet from google search

[Micha]

@superclown2 I already did that on Thursday, on Friday it was quiet, on Saturday the next wave started again. But that's not the problem, the slump in sales is really bad and somehow no longer explainable. The ranking is really good, the site is technically absolutely fine. It's just annoying that Google's update has gone through, but small sites keep dropping and there's nothing you can do about it. Optimization has already been done, what else should the store do?

[ichthyous]

My friend's store has been hit pretty hard. Traffic is up, but sales have dropped to an absolute minimum since the weekend, the whole of last week was really bad though. The only thing that has increased is the number of spam messages via the contact form. He won't be able to keep this up for much longer.

Viable traffic and conversions to any e-commerce related site are basically nil. I am getting one real viable inquiry a week these days and the rest is people asking for jobs or spam submitted through my form. Google has not referred any real quality leads since about early November 2023. Before that it was considerably better, but then the periods of disappearing traffic just started getting longer and longer. The customers who are inquiring are delusional mostly about their budgets and a waste of time. I am also noticing 4 large ads at the top of mobile now and more of my competitors are running ads than before, indicating that they are hurting from the drop in organic traffic

As is the norm these days...9am sharp my USA traffic dropped off a cliff and will stay down most of the work day. This is probably due to the sheer number of ads now as my ranking is higher.

[saladtosser]

I see G is cutting staff to save costs after record profits, I guess not being enough, why don't G do something like movie/series creation and put it on YouTube only for pro members, do something creative!

[superclown2]

Optimization has already been done, what else should the store do?

I really wish I could offer a magic bullet. However presumably the guy has friends and customers, and a vote. If enough people make a noise perhaps Google's end will come more quickly. Certainly the Web is now full of chatter about how bad Google's search results are, and without their monopoly (which might; just might; be taken away from them by the legislators) they are toast.

However; as I've said before, their ascendency won't last for ever. Those who have the ability to stick it out will hopefully reap the rewards eventually. I wish him (and all the rest of us for that matter) good luck.

[superclown2]

why don't G do something like movie/series creation and put it on YouTube only for pro members, do something creative!

Just about everything actually creative that Google has done in the past has crashed and burned. They are still, a couple of decades later, a one-trick pony. 'Other Bets' are collectively a dismal failure, their driverless car keeps hitting things, AI is a moneypit and they are currently very much an also-ran in this technology. Let us not over-estimate the abilities of this company, which is only where it is because of tactics that many consider unlawful.

[Micha]

@Superclown2 In Germany, a company has just lodged a complaint with the EU and a group of small publishers is now also forming here to finally wake up the politicians. I hope this will help, because things cannot and must not go on like this.

[Conro]

Even without hcu google has put so much stuff in the serp that it will be very difficult to get the traffic of a year ago. Google then crawled the whole web, de-indexing what it doesn't need for its AI because it is now assimilated. In the end, google will stay with sge and send traffic to the few whitelisted sites that in return will continue to feed sge. Without government intervention or users deciding not to use Google anymore we are screwed and Now I take off my tinfoil helmet hoping I'm wrong

[Whitey]

I just saw Meta AI search prompted in my WhatsApp account for the first time. Interacts with Bing, Not bad for an early start.

Uncluttered clear results.

Could Google lose market share to rival partnerships at critical touch points on mobile and apps?

[not2easy]

FB added their new Llama 3 LLM to Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger on April 19: [webmasterworld.com...]

Not worldwide yet...

[Whitey]

OpenAI is rumored to be dropping GPT-5 soon — here's what we know about the next-gen model ….

Social media is buzzing with rumors of a big OpenAI announcement. This has been sparked by the success of Meta’s Llama 3 (with a bigger model coming in July)

[tomsguide.com...]

Seems the en*hittification of Google’s search is steadily approaching a watershed tipping point. Multiple alternative touch points, degenerating results quality, EU’s DMA, big tech US monopolies investigations, Wall Streets insatiable appetite for growth at all costs. Fear and greed.

I think the door is opening for the flood to come in.

www.tomsguide.com OpenAI is rumored to be dropping GPT-5 soon — here's what we know about the next-gen model Will GPT-5 be in ChatGPT?

[superclown2]

I hope this will help, because things cannot and must not go on like this

That's good. When Google is finally tamed I have no doubt that the cause will be actions outside the US, where lobbying (much of which would be illegal over here) is a 9 billion dollar industry. On the other hand I have found that although visitor numbers are well down, conversion rates on our sites have been rising month on month; clearly there are people out there who recognise that they have to be prepared to ignore all the googlespam in order to reach real web sites with genuine offers, rather than advertisers who have had to raise their prices to cover the Google Tax.

[Martin Ice Web]

Has someone an idea of what google is looking for these days. It seems that there is not realy a pattern. Some of the sites in serps are so worse that one could think the alog is upside down.

[Micha]

@Martin Ice Web I'd like to know that too, but I don't think anyone can answer that, because nobody can get through the chaos. Besides, it doesn't matter what you search for on Google, you won't find it anyway. Yesterday I was looking for instructions for a PHP script and all sorts of things came up (even an article about butter), but not a single link to the topic itself. You can only shake your head.

[Billy85]

@Martin
I believe it's at least 2 things, because these things are what they are currently going for the most:
1. Cost reduction
2. Profit maximization

I wouldn't be surprised, if some previous classifiers were removed because they were too expensive and they dumbed the algorithm down and call it Helpful Content Classifier.

I also believe, they rank poorly converting sites on purpose at the top, so people go back to SERPs.

[Whitey]

Has someone an idea of what google is looking for these days.

tbh - i think what you are seeing is an internal heated battle between the Google engineering team purists for "quality" and the Google "money merchants" that breathe profitability and growth.

This seems to be born out by the evidenced internal emails between the teams set out in the article by Ed Zitron [wheresyoured.at...] revealed at the anti trust trial.

When internal teams are in conflict, an empire can suffer. Particularly when the vision of Google is unclear in the face of so many business threats. The short term solution is to squeeze those "partners" that supported them at all costs for profit. And the results are shockingly poor and unfair.

Clearly you can put together great content, fantastic UI/UX, but Google only relies on brands with big marketing budgets and Reddit/Quora/Wiki etc.

This put's them at odds with fair competition rules in the SERP's being pressured on them with the EU's DMA. It's going to be a frenetic few years ahead.

www.wheresyoured.at The Man Who Killed Google Search Wanna listen to this story instead? Check out this week's Better Offline podcast, "The Man That Destroyed Google Search," available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. This is the story of how Google Search died, and the people responsible for killing it. The story begins

[NeapTide]

I believe the future of Google will just be a phone software developer (android), paid map provider, an ad-agency supplying ads, YouTube and cloud hosting service.

Bye bye traditional Google search. It will only be directory for business websites, brands, forums and pirated / downloadable contents including stolen images.

[Conro]

Today my site has the lowest traffic ever. It's gone down a lot and I have no idea what to do. It seems that the more you add articles or update, the more visitors decrease As soon as the bot crawls the post. I opened another site and the articles are indexed but they are nowhere to be found except by writing the full title. I don't know what to do anymore, it seems like whatever I've done is wrong

[ichthyous]

There we go...8am sharp and USA traffic drops off a cliff. Everything else is much higher. Clearly Google has decided that USA traffic is the place to squeeze everyone to death in order to raise quarterly profits. Don't expect anything but sporadic US traffic anymore. I am down to a single real inquiry a week now. Even though UK and Euro traffic seems normal to high they also are not inquiring at all.

[saladtosser]

When Danny Sullivan said, "You want to do things that make sense for your visitors, because what "shows Google" you have a great site is to be ... a great site for your visitors not to add things you assume are just for Google." & "Doing things you think are just for Google is falling behind what our ranking systems are trying to reward rather than being in front of them,"

Do you think we should remove all the crap schema markup we add to our sites? This is added just for Google(because they asked us to) but doesn't help the user, is schema now working against us in Googles eyes? Its more code that gets sent to the users browser for a start!

Other news YouTube's been experimenting with ads that play while your video is paused, more ads guys :) [uk.news.yahoo.com...]

[Conro]

Ds only talks nonsense, anyone would be able to do his "job" in social media. I have always written for users and you have seen the result in the end. I'm seeing that these days even some sites that were not affected by the March update, after its end was declared are having a slight decrease in keywords.

[ichthyous]

Do you think we should remove all the crap schema markup we add to our sites? This is added just for Google(because they asked us to) but doesn't help the user, is schema now working against us in Googles eyes? Its more code that gets sent to the users browser for a start!

I always thought that schema was a bit of a pain and probably mostly ignored anyway. But what can you do, if it does help then you can't ignore it. I no longer worry about the finer points with google.

My Core web vitals (or whatever it's called this week) have mostly gone yellow as a result of my turning on more JS and CSS for more user-friendly activity. I don't care about cheap visitors on slow loading connections, they don't buy anything anyway. I need a smoother experience for the ones who are viable, and if that doesn't jive with google's ridiculous metrics then so be it.

I removed Google Analytics two year ago or more...don't miss it in the slightest and it does not appear to have hurt me since my ranking has risen in that time.

[CommandDork]

@ichthyous

What was your alternative to Google Analytics? I'm in the market for a new analytics system now.

[saladtosser]

Just in, Income school take on Google, worth a watch [youtube.com...]

[Conro]

@saladtosser I've seen the video and it's okay I agree with what it says. If you're not a big brand, google will take you out after stealing your content. Today even a site I follow talked with a post about what is happening with Google, Users have commented that Google sucks more and more.

[ichthyous]

What was your alternative to Google Analytics? I'm in the market for a new analytics system now.

CommandDork - I now use Piwik Pro and also clicky. I prob shouldn't double up, and Piwik definitely slows the loads from time to time, but most of the time it's fine.

[Micha]

The real fun is yet to come anyway. The second update is coming on Sunday and I'm willing to bet that we'll all suffer.

[twitter.com ]

[NeapTide]

@conro
Is your website hit gravely after march anti spam update?
If so then gather all the crappy dead and poor quality backlinks from google search console, put them in text file and upload that to disavow tool

Google will crawl your submitted list some day and remove them and this should lift the shadow penalty.

Usually they take several weeks to months to crawl your disavowed links list and remove them.

So hope for the best.

[Conro]

@NeapTide Lately I've been getting a lot of spammy links pointing to various shady sites. At the moment I haven't removed these domains because knowing google I could make things even worse. After the May 5th update I'll see if I can create a disavow file, as long as I don't close the site before

[System]

New May thread continues here: [webmasterworld.com...]

[edited by: not2easy at 1:27 pm (utc) on May 2, 2024]
[edit reason] new month, new thread [/edit]