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]

[superclown2]

I don't know if this is old news to others but here in the UK I've just seen a new block arriving at the top of many search results: 'discussions and forums'. Reddit, of course, as well as several USA sites (useless to UK visitors) is almost invariably at the top. Naturally PAA , Related Searches and PASF are not far behind.

This is getting beyond ridiculous. Is it a direct challenge to the legislators I wonder, on the lines of 'this is what we can do if you mess with us'? They have already said that this kind of thing could result from the DMA.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

@superclown2

Totally agree with you. For those who still survived during these HCU robberies - be prepared, you will be the person who will pay all these fines. I also believe that in the common future Google will continue futher it's monopolistic abuse through the market to get all money in their pockets. Don't let make yourself a fool.

[Micha]

@ubound Even if Matomo is very imprecise: Yes, that's what I think when I look at it. Every now and then the number of visitors rises sharply in real time, but then falls again just as quickly.

I'm currently wondering what has happened since last week? First all the articles on my website ended up in Discover for a few days, then it went downhill again and now I'm experiencing a massive drop in impressions and clicks (today it's 64 percent below average, without the Discover effect). Although my visibility index is increasing according to Sistrix, my visitor numbers have dropped to the level of 6 years ago. The website is not affected by a manual spam measure. I am at a loss and what really annoys me is that even my publisher page on Google News is no longer updating and some articles are not indexed, including one I worked on for 2 years and published on Sunday.

It seems that Google now wants to put the lid on the coffin of my website. If this doesn't change, Google's traffic will drop to 0 in a week or two.

[Fluff_Nutz]

The whole 'switching traffic on and off' is also happening over on Youtube too. Which I'm not surprised about. Plus G recently released a 'Promote' video option which has a similar effect as Google Ads. One minute I can easily net 100 views per video and then, suddenly, get barely over 10. This is also why I cut down on content creating for Youtube, I used to post regularly and daily. Used to. Now I'm just wasting my time and effort.

I'm also not the only person to notice this. Still its surprising that not many over on Youtube are complaining about it. Just the odd few here and there. Perhaps most creators think its normal? I know many don't own a website to notice the similarities. They used to boost videos too but I haven't had any of my videos boosted for weeks now. I thought that perhaps posting daily but at the same time would help with the algorithm but nope.

I saw someone's traffic graph over on the Youtube subreddit a few weeks back. It showed how inconsistent their traffic was. Which looked very similar to my own.

Anything owned by Google is fast becoming a lost cause.

[saladtosser]

@Fluff_Nutz I notice my earnings on YouTube have dropped by 20% the past month with the same views, I suspect more business's are using the in SERP promotions more and more and spending less/switching from ads in creators videos maybe? The in SERP promotions cuts out any revenue for the creator correct?! Just another example of G wanting the full pie!

Does anyone know where the money goes when countries or the EU fine Google? Does it go to the affected sites or just into the governments coffers?

[Micha]

@saladtosser The money stays in Brussels and is used for all the subsidies etc., some of it goes to big publishers. We owners of small websites see none of it.

But another question, could it be that Google is restructuring its advertising business in such a way that it wants more direct payment from users? In other words, premium services etc., as its advertising business is under constant fire?

Edit: By the way, there's a lot of movement in the serps again

[seroundtable.com ]

[morpheus83]

It is just the big names that are getting all the juice. To give you an example just google - how to get rid of cockroaches and the first link that will pop is of Forbes. Yes, a business magazine is somehow the best source to fight bugs.

[superclown2]

To give you an example just google - how to get rid of cockroaches and the first link that will pop is of Forbes

I tried that. First there was Discussions And Forums (which I hadn't seen here in London until today) with Quora, Reddit and Quora again. Then, PAA and yes, Forbes in first organic spot. Reddit was there again in the 4th organic spot then Quora in the ninth.

I have been in this business since before Google existed and I have never seen such garbage in the SERPs. Back in the 90s Mamma, Dogpile, Hotbot; all these would have been ashamed to publish such useless junk. Someone at Google needs to be sacked before they destroy the business completely.

[Treud]

Forbes having an affiliate link and ads :D (and probably with copy/paste content)

[Whitey]

To give you an example just google - how to get rid of cockroaches and the first link that will pop is of Forbes.

Desktop is behaving with different results to mobile down here in Australia.

Desktop has a panel of 24 sub category headers (From sources across the web) with drop downs for each leading to a carousel of another 4 for each item, showing summary and links. That's 24x4 sub sub items quickly available

tbh - not bad (not perfect) - a user can quickly drill down to what they want and identify some options/links
below this are the usual listings. Forbes isn't prominent here. Most are localized.

Mobile is just a regular listing and Forbes comes up around No4 and shouldn't be there as it's not a locally relevant listing (being USA centtric).

[superclown2]

Desktop is behaving with different results to mobile down here in Australia.

Here in London I haven't seen any Discussions and Forums junk on mobile today but the lengthy scroll seems to have been abandoned., at least in my vertical. Pages are containing fewer organics; the most I have seen on the first page so far is seven, the lowest two. The rest is ads and googlespam.

On desktop we have the now-usual 4 ads of varying lengths, then PAA and Discussions and Forums before the first few organics, followed by more googlespam and ads. The actual organics, on the search terms I used, have changed, with different results from yesterday.

Why are these results so abysmal and chaotic? I can think of three possible scenarios:

1) Google are expecting a caning from Mr Mehta and they are squeezing every last penny out of the golden goose before the axe falls on it's neck;
2) The rumours of a paid search coming are true (good luck to them with that), with a parallel free one packed with ads, and Google are experimenting with potential layouts;
3) Google has suffered a corporate mental breakdown with thousands of employees wondering when their 3am redundancy text will arrive. Perhaps those who have jumped ship to work on ChatGPT's proposed search engine were very wise to do so.

Perhaps none of these are correct; perhaps all of them.

[Whitey]

Something new or strengthening recently:

I just did a regional localized brand name search.

[brand name] [service type] [location]. Here’s what I saw:
- 8 of 10 positions for the brand / location
- content carousels for the brand linked to their website
- linked different content sections to the brands key information for the 8
- Google reviews and a Google “rate this panel”

In the top 30 results, it is mostly the brand. eg Brand news, carousel of nearby brands, best products of brand, alternatives to brand etc etc

Of the top 30 results, only 2 are returned for quality independent meta search comparison sites. Some of the big meta and niche sites are now GONE.

This is a big recent shift and shows to me that Google can replicate any intermediary content website and organize its own content layer (perhaps better) directing traffic directly to the principle, eliminating the middle man.

Nothing new here, except the intensity and dominance of all scroll positioning. It’s hectic.

The next step will be to charge for referrals/advertising directly with the source, eliminating the middleman and raising the ad prices (=more revenue for Google).

I wonder if this is the start of a demise of the meta search sites, particularly in travel.

Actually, it makes me wonder where any site will be in 6-12 months if Google and AI can rebuild your marketing presence better. Yikes.

Perhaps we’re on the road to all sites being expunged on the basis that Google can build your site better.

Google is gobbling up your content faster and with AI it’s going to accelerate imo.

[christianz]

Drop on May 9th. The whole month of May is bad and getting worse.

[mosxu]

Looks like G is in killing mode no buyers are clicking here!

search.chatgpt.com should open competition up and for us to be able to compare quality of the traffic!

Search should be offered as a utility and many companies should sell ads and pay Chat GPT a commission!

[seokees]

It is going from bad to worse with traffic but even more with conversions.

[Micha]

I'm really fed up with Google. My new articles are no longer being indexed, yesterday there was another slump, and today traffic has dropped sharply again. And for days now, two false reports from my niche, which every major news site automatically has from a news agency, have been ranking at the top, that's what I call logic.

I really wonder why we're all still going along with this. At the moment, we're just publishing content to feed an AI. And unlike us, the big publishers benefit from this because they get big contracts from the AI companies. A new professional field: a pawn between big companies ... yay.

[tom_010101]

Update number <5000? [seo-suedwest.de...]

[sk7411]

@tom_010101 , Barry is not gonna like this i bet! :|

[NeapTide]

Did you know the name Google is the combination of 2 words Go and Ogle. Ogle is actually a slang word.

These days Go-Ogle is more like "Go F**k yourself"

They were supposed to fix the things with new core updates. But they are making it worse.

[saladtosser]

Buckle up my lovelies. I am about to rant...

Before SGE was announced around 12-14 months ago, I predicted on here that it was only a matter of time until Google took your/our content and answered everything themselves; my logic was that they needed to make more money every quarter, so it had to come from somewhere, at some point. (I didn't expect it would happen this fast; kinda thank Spam Altman for G picking up the pace.)

My prediction for what is **NOW*** to come is when SGE is released to all users. There will be no reason for the general users to visit most websites anymore. As a result, many hosting companies and domain registers will go bankrupt (because most small website owners go under, they need mass sales). Just before that hosting costs and domain name renewals will go way up to try and compensate for the loss of the many at the expense of the few; this will push out many more sites as the traffic (next to none) won't even cover these basic expenses. (G has your content in SGE, and your going under is a bonus to them). WordPress and plugin creators go under, and there is no incentive to create/innovate in a dead/dying ecosystem of a few sites left; the death of all WordPress sites follows, wordpress/cloudflare/cdns go under. Remember, G has your content in SGE, and them going under is a bonus.

Custom Web designers and web developers (myself included) have become obsolete. No one needs *NEW* websites anymore, and entry-level hosting/domain renewals and development costs have become too high for a site (and with no traffic to monetize) unless you are a huge brand and need some web presence; competition in sues and a race to the bottom becomes a reality, it is then mostly outsourced to India because the cost of living is so much lower!

Content creators, editors, writers, graphic designers, and SEOs are all finished because of AI in general (if they aren't already) but completely finished at this point; even the ones who are kept on by sites because of morality from site owners will be let go because the owner no longer has the traffic and the costs are too much, websites pivot, start selling things, all start ads as organic produces no traffic or organic is removed completely one quarter (it's coming), ad price hits sky high you pay more than you make on ads...

Search Liasons, JM, and DS jobs are obsolete; you don't need to liaise with webmasters that no longer exist (this is the one positive I can find in the situation because some people need some karma).

The entire internet ecosystem is completely destroyed; what are you gonna do? If you made enough, retire; if not re-skill in a non-creative online job like, let's say, plumbing?! We see a massive influx into trades, pushes down prices, more competition, and undercutting each other until AI robots (a few more years away) take over these jobs...... Universal basic income happens; Google pays us through massive taxation to prevent social unrest and prevent people dragging people like DS, JM and the higher-ups into the streets and going gadafi on their asses!

The transition will be incredibly painful, but UBI is the only long-term answer to their short-sighted greed, and their greed will eventually mean they work for us, feed/cloth and water us (five years away) (assuming the covid injection doesn't kill the masses, the plebs in the shorter term)

Thoughts? BTW love you guys haha!

[christianz]

Google's unique advantage was integration with the open web - websites and web apps. If they make the mistake to copy OpenAI search or something similar, they will have very little advantage left, especially as time goes on and they have fewer and fewer data to scrape. They have to make decision which way to go.

Btw, generative content is often garbage and doesn't get near the quality, trustworthiness and freshness that open web apps provide.

With the AI hype and desperate attempts to outdo Microsoft/OpenAI, Google may make the wrong decision.

[rustybrick]

@sk7411 what am I not going to like? :)

[Micha]

@Salattosser true to the motto: The last one turns off the lights. Unfortunately, what you're writing is not far-fetched, it's probably time to get yourself a good wine and when the time comes, drink it comfortably and watch the internet go down.

[mosxu]

Too many dead bodies already, killing even more is an insult to law and order!

[superclown2]

In the meanwhile we haven't seen the Mehta decision yet, which may change things completely; there is another DOJ case against them coming to trial next year; Europe is already investigating them for possible breaches of the DMA (and these people don't take prisoners); India is determined to bring them down - need I go on?

Google have managed to transform themselves from the most popular guys in town to the most hated. Morale amongst their workers is said to be at rock bottom. Nearly everything they touch, apart from 'search' (which they are making a real mess of at the moment) turns sour PDQ. They are betting their whole future on AI which they used to be leaders in but they are now an also ran with many of their best brains working for other companies.

I have said this many times but it's still worth repeating: without their monopoly of search they would be out of business in no time. It is that monopoly, together with the complete inability of Bing to accept that their search results page is an incoherent mess in which ads are almost impossible to tell from organics, that has kept them going so far. If they are obliged to stop their wholesale bribery those who have benefited from it will have to make other arrangements to cover the shortfall which might well mean bringing out their own search functions or partnering with different providers instead.

In the meanwhile people out there still want to get important information from websites that they can compare with each other rather than be spoon fed instant single answers by an AI system which has been trained on very dodgy data. Bing has been offering AI search for quite a while now yet their share of the search market has barely moved.

On Monday we expect to see a new competitor which may, or may not, nibble at Google's market share but if it doesn't there will be others, and if the current legal moves don't bring them to heel there will be more litigation until something succeeds, or a better mousetrap is invented.

It didn't have to be like this but the greed of Wall Street has made Google's future far less secure than it should be.

[Whitey]

Google Search Claims Another Victim: Tripadvisor Lowers Outlook

[skift.com...]

Remember the days when TA was the 1st place you went to for a review. What changed?

[EditorialGuy]

Google Search Claims Another Victim: Tripadvisor Lowers Outlook

Ah, the irony: Google helped to build TripAdvisor in the first place by indexing keyword-based TripAdvisor pages that were empty except for an invitation to "write a review."

[Markedd]

@saladtosser I can assure you without a shadow of doubt that there will be no UBI now or ever in the future.
As for the SGE taking over everything, we'll see if that holds true. Even if my website is no more, the info I moved to YouTube is well received and if things go right (for a change), I should be up back to same monetization level as I was before this whole conundrum before the end of the year.
Again, I do believe that there is life after Google and the people that want to use SGE will be just a portion which will be served by Google/OpenAI/blahblahAI. Those that want to use the web as before will still search websites. And I think the latter is the far larger group.

[Micha]

Today is the first day that most of my website visitors are not coming from Google. According to Search Console, impressions and clicks have dropped a little more each day over the last week and, according to the latest data from Friday, have reached the level my website had 7 years ago. This is pure arbitrariness on Google's part. It can't be that a week ago the numbers went through the roof thanks to Discover and then on Tuesday there was such a sharp drop. If it was a manual spam measure, okay, but it's not. It's not natural and since it's not just my site that's affected, it can only be described as market manipulation by Google.

[Treud]

Tried some KW in my niche today with Bing, I saw the same site first page with the same blog post in 4 different languages.
If translating your website with AI in all langues in the world for SEO is now a thing I’m out of this world…