May 2024 Google Search Observations

[Billy85]

When I checked my site, 90% or so were some Spam links, but I wouldn't disavow them because I've heard that some sites were worse off after disavowing.
Almost every site has to deal with this and from what I understand, Google only regards those that are listed in your search console?

I also think it has also to do with the amount of people that click on it, meaning, if you try to build backlinks and nobody is clicking on it, google disregards them or gives that link less relevance.

[edited by: not2easy at 1:30 pm (utc) on May 2, 2024]
[edit reason] split thread cleanup [/edit]

[Micha]

DDG uses Bing and Bing has been having massive problems for a few days now.

SEOs making fun of publishers

These SEOs are the plague and there are more and more of them on X.

I worked as an SEO myself for a long time and I have to be honest and say that more than half of the industry gets on my nerves with their smart-assedness and their worship of Google.
Clients run to them in the hope of a better ranking. They spend huge amounts of money on it and then look stupidly into the tube because they are not honestly told that nobody in this industry can do magic and hardly anyone honestly says that you should diversify your traffic.

I am now of the opinion that the industry is largely made up of rip-off artists.

[RedBar]

I am now of the opinion that the industry is largely made up of rip-off artists.

There's not much doubt about that !

[Billy85]

@Micha
Problems in what way?
I noticed that there has been a change in SERPs and that ecosia & DDG weren't working for 1 or 2 days.

I used ecosia as my main Search engine, but unfortunately it looks like they're now getting their results from Google now (just like Brave), so I stopped using ecosia.

DDG is still uses Bing and their results haven't changed much.

[Micha]

Bing went down completely a few days ago and has been having problems ever since. Ecosisa is still using Bing, by the way, but the results have really gotten worse.

[christianz]

Bing/Duck is plagued with lots of SEO sites ranking in high positions. You know, those sites in "niches" that all have similar vacuous bloated articles re-spun and re-generated in different wording with ad box every 3 paragraphs.

With all the horror that HCU did, at least on Google you see them a lot less. I even prefer #*$!ty reddit or quora over that kind of generated spam.

[Dooku]

Bing/Duck is plagued with lots of SEO sites ranking in high positions

On top of that Bing has a "bug" that is STILL NOT solved, by which a competitor can get you deindexed from Bing after making a few complaints.
Also, Bing will deindex your website for the most idiotic reasons or no apparent reason at all.
Just take a look at the many webmaster complaints on the Microsoft Support forums about this issue and the many articles on blogs online telling the same, and that even included the utterly useless Bing support chats and emails they received. Bing is just atrocious.

[Billy85]

@Micha
I regularly compare and compared SERPs between these Search Engines in my niche.

DDG SERPs haven't changed much (for my niche) since Bing went down, Bing SERPs have changed for some keywords in my niche, ecosia keywords completely changed in my niche and for my website and they are now either the same or closer to Googles SERPs, than to DDG or Bing.

[ichthyous]

Wow, I am seeing a 70% drop in traffic to my site's homepage this weekend. Now a drop is normal on holiday weekends, but certainly not 70%....what's up with that?

[RedBar]

Very poor weekend for my global site at 60% yesterday and so far today after 20 hours at 40%. I expect tomorrow to be equally low.

UK hotel site ended up yesterday after a very slow start and has been extremely busy today as hoped for with food and live music.

[Micha]

What a strange weekend. Saturday traffic from Google collapsed, Sunday a strong increase, today so far 1 hour a lot of traffic, one hour as good as nothing, this has been going on since 6 am. I give up trying to understand that.

[tom_010101]

For me too, a little bit down again at the weekend. It goes down, down and down. Nobody knows why or why. I'm slowly but surely coming to terms with the fact that this topic no longer has a future. :(

[Fluff_Nutz]

Oh wow, there is life after Google. My traffic overnight is +140%. Bringing me back to, almost, where I was. I think a few new articles went viral but Google, was -20%. So none of this increased traffic was sent from them. Nice! After months and weeks of solid decline I now see an increase. Now to try and maintain it.

[tom_010101]

But the increase didn't come from Google, or what?

[ichthyous]

Same old same old...very dead week. Low traffic and only four inquiries which I could tell were going nowhere. Since about 2022 I have noticed that holidays are especially slow now. Perhaps a permanent change in mentality after COVID, or people spending less after the sugar high of all that free pandemic cash being spread around by the US govt.

[RedBar]

Traffic back to normal for me today which surprised me a little.

It is a holiday weekend in the UK therefore I went out for a few beers last night and it really did shock me. Several pubs were already closed and the normally really busy pubs were all absolutely dead ... Were all the supposed 20 million car journeys happening last night?

[Micha]

I can't complain about my own website today either, although Google traffic is still poor, the measures taken in recent weeks are working surprisingly well. If it stays that way, I can be satisfied.

However, I am worried about the store, it has been advertised on Google, but nothing is happening. At the moment I'm wondering if it's really just down to Google that sales are dropping so much. I mean, sure, Google only sends zombies, but have people generally become more cautious and now prefer to run to Amazon and those Chinese junk stores Temu and Co. I mean, Google can't be hurting sales that much because over the years you've collected people who already know you.

[ichthyous]

I mean, sure, Google only sends zombies, but have people generally become more cautious and now prefer to run to Amazon and those Chinese junk stores Temu and Co. I mean, Google can't be hurting sales that much because over the years you've collected people who already know you.

Someone was telling me yesterday about how her daughters found the same baby clothes on Temu for less than Amazon. I would not want to be in any business which resells low priced items now. But my high priced items are also not doing well since the end of 2023...mostly Google hoovering up all the best converting traffic but also I think that two wars, election year, inflation etc are all taking a toll

[Micha]

I'm just wondering that no matter what I do, no measure works in the store, that's illogical, there's enough traffic, but sales have been terrible for days.

By the way, has anyone else noticed that Google is increasingly ranking dead websites at the top? Especially when you search for something via Google Lens (I just spent an hour searching for several things and only dead websites were displayed at the top)

[Broaster]

I was hit two years ago never recovered, id get some spikes here and there but I barely get 20 to 50 visits a day if lucky. A lot of independent small publishers who were ranking well and making six figures off adsense have no lost all income flow the past 4 months. Many went from getting around 50 thousand to 100 thousand visits a day to 5 thousand or less. Why is google doing this?

[Micha]

Internal technical documentation Google documents relating to the ranking have been leaked.

Articel: [ipullrank.com ]



Of course, it won't be up to date, but it will definitely be interesting.

[Mark_A]

.. Many went from getting around 50 thousand to 100 thousand visits a day to 5 thousand or less. Why is google doing this?

In the beginning (pre Adwords etc) it was easy to rank a page / site on Google, and it resulted in thousands of converting visitors. These days the competition is numerous and intense.

Only ten pages can be in the top 10, can you really say your site is in the top 10 of perhaps thousands or more of other sites?

[RubicCubed]

Google documents relating to the ranking have been leaked.

After briefly reading through this, I can conclude Google has been very dishonest with us. I haven't trusted what Google has been saying to us for a long time, and this leak reinforces why we should never trust Google again.

[not2easy]

A more in-depth discussion about the leaked docs was posted here: [webmasterworld.com...]

It includes authentication of the leak and the start of a useful summary with contributing links is available via @rustybrick with input from Rand Fishkin and Mike King

[RedBar]

14 hours of my Google day and utterly dead, flat on its back across all my sites ... Have I missed something?

[ichthyous]

Apparently it wasn't just the holiday weekend...today everyone is back to work and traffic is catastrophically low! My home page is still at -67% just like the last 4 days. USA and UK are -56% and -34% respectively. Maybe everyone took an extra day off?

Category pages are pulling in more traffic than my home page now. I have lost about 20% of my top-3 ranking terms over the last few months. Perhaps a temporary situation, but it seems like a slow and steady decline.

[edited by: ichthyous at 2:36 pm (utc) on May 28, 2024]

[seokees]

In decline again. Little drop in traffic it seems, but no more conversions for a few days. Zombie traffic perhaps.

[Micha]

@not2easy Sorry, I had looked before, but I overlooked the thread, though it wouldn't hurt to post this again.

@ichthyous The traffic here in Germany is also getting more and more ridiculous. Google continues on its path, favoring large websites more and more, leaving small ones for dead. However, after the leak, I'm no longer surprised.

[RedBar]

Maybe everyone took an extra day off?

Well, I rarely do my grocery shopping before 7 pm however I have just been to my usual supermarket at 2.30 pm and, honestly, I could not get parked, it was heaving. I have never seen this supermarket so full in all the years I've been going there, wtf?

[Fluff_Nutz]

After reading the leak I'm not surprised why my traffic is continuously dropping with Google/Greed Corporate search. Another -10% drop overnight. Thankfully I'm becoming less dependant on them than when I first started. Terrible company. Every day is a drop from Google. I get the feeling they are deindexing everything. Which, again, would not surprise me.

Meanwhile thanks to, shall we say, other avenues? I'm still finding my traffic at +130%. I expect it to decrease over time as more competition comes into play and now that the work week has, once again, arrived. But hopefully it can remain stable and some growth remains. If it continues like this I'll be happy and so damn relived that I don't need Google in my life.

[ichthyous]

Huge drop across the board today...lower traffic than the holiday weekend so something is definitely up today.