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]

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?

Or maybe Apple is extorting Google, since Google needs Apple's users more than Apple needs Google as its search provider. In any case, whether you call it bribery or extortion, it's no different than the slotting allowances (a.k.a. "slotting fees" or "shelf fees") that determine what you find on your supermarket's shelves when you go grocery shopping.

[NeapTide]

@Conro+

Lol even richest person in the world Elon Musk is openly mocking Google now.

He advises his followers on twitter to use "before:2023" in every search query on Google search to get good results.

Lol, even then Google will never acknowledge that their SERPs are pathetic and they should be ashamed of themselves.

[superclown2]

it's no different than the slotting allowances (a.k.a. "slotting fees" or "shelf fees") that determine what you find on your supermarket's shelves when you go grocery shopping.

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.

[ghostofseo]

Elon trolling Google love it!

Imagine if you worked for Google and realize search was total #*$!?

[NeapTide]

@ghostofseo

It is sh*t. Today I was searching for paleontology and dinosaurs related stuff and after refining search several times by changing keywords i finally found article I was looking for at almost 36th position.

Now this is kind of normal with google. You just keep scrolling and scrolling to find what you are looking for.

[Micha]

I'm afraid Google has now decided to sweep my website off the net completely. The traffic has dropped again, as has the ranking from yesterday to today and looking at the visibility index, I don't give the website much time left. I wouldn't be surprised anyway if Google destroys my small business with the announced May update.

At least I'm not alone, because apart from my direct competitors, who have made significant gains, all the websites I monitor are doing the same.

[Conro]

So to recap, now google is deindexing vertical sites because they focus on one or a few main topics. From May 5th it will start de-indexing sites that publish content that is third-party, but since they can't know I think they will start de-indexing all sites that write about many different topics. In the end, there will be no one left

[Micha]

@conro that is exactly the current situation. I'm going to use this to give my website a new structure and a new design and then we'll see. We discussed in the team today that we won't let Google get us down and will reduce our dependency on G even further. I expect the chaos at Google to get worse, so this is probably one of the few ways to survive as a niche site that isn't crammed with product reviews. Fortunately, the site isn't my main source of income and I can afford to sit out the doldrums Google is giving me for a while.

And then some reading material. The article hits the nail on the head.

[nymag.com ]

[superclown2]

I'm going to use this to give my website a new structure and a new design and then we'll see.

Be careful. I changed a site, with a mid-range performance and which hadn't been overhauled in years, a few months ago. It now looks really modern, clear, easy to navigate on all device sizes and it has 100% core web vitals.

It has crashed in the Google SERPs big time and now produces a fraction of the clicks it used to. Coincidence perhaps; after all it is a specialist site packed with useful information about it's core topic (much of it unique; I have a vigorous policy of excluding bots that copy my content), and Google seems to hate these nowadays, much preferring high ad spending sites with no particular expertise in anything, really.

[Micha]

@Superclown A design change is always very dangerous, but I've been planning the relaunch for a long time anyway. I'm waiting until the Google update is complete, but the way the website is developing, now is the best time to take the risk.

[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.