June 2024 Google Search Observations

[NeapTide]

That's how google is disguising ads in Generative AI results. They are not even labelling them ads anymore. Pure day light robbery of user generated content and plagiarizing that with ads for their own gain.

[drive.google.com ]

[edited by: not2easy at 4:57 pm (utc) on Jun 1, 2024]
[edit reason] new month, new thread [/edit]

[Micha]

@dooku that describes the situation exactly.

@Superclown2 That's how I see it too, but Google will probably not follow through consistently, as with all recent announcements.

General: has Google changed anything again? My site has had increasing Google traffic since yesterday, and the store I look after is also getting a lot of users. I am working on generating more traffic, but the focus is not on Google. Nevertheless, all the tools show me that the ranking of both sites there has improved significantly.

I have just seen that the number of indexed pages has risen again, and the backlinks are also back.

[christianz]

This all started in 2019 and correlates perfectly with the stats. It appears that the internet has been stagnating and actually declining from that year on as many of the big tech corps have been shrinking in active users......I did not know that!

I have said for years that WWW is shrinking. Number of websites is decreasing every year. For obvious (to us webmasters) reasons.

[saladtosser]

>>>>I have said for years that WWW is shrinking. Number of websites is decreasing every year. For obvious (to us webmasters) reasons<<<

Who needs the internet when we have Google AI overviews? You know that’s exactly what they're saying (and thinking) over in Mountain View right now, high-fiving each other while enjoying a Rainbow Sangria cocktail as Pride Month kicks off! Hoorah

[mosxu]

WWW is not shrinking,

Maybe the size of WWW was reported wrong in the past years!

[ichthyous]

General: has Google changed anything again? My site has had increasing Google traffic since yesterday, and the store I look after is also getting a lot of users. I am working on generating more traffic, but the focus is not on Google. Nevertheless, all the tools show me that the ranking of both sites there has improved significantly.

I have just seen that the number of indexed pages has risen again, and the backlinks are also back.

I had two strong days on Sunday and Monday, now it fell off a cliff again at 10am sharp and stayed down all day: [ibb.co ]

This is the new norm with google...forget traffic during weekdays at prime business hours. My backlinks shown in GSC have recovered somewhat but they are still much lower than what was shown before.

ibb.co Screenshot-2024-06-04-at-7-22-30-PM hosted at ImgBB Image Screenshot-2024-06-04-at-7-22-30-PM hosted in ImgBB

[Micha]

@ichthyos Admittedly, when I wrote my post yesterday, things were still looking very good, but around 3 pm Google traffic plummeted completely. And today my visibility index shows another sharp drop. The Search Console data doesn't look good today either. Well, what the heck, my visitor numbers are still stable, the fluctuations are around 200 readers, sometimes more, sometimes less. I can live with that. The only thing that's difficult is to grow.

What really annoys me is that my contract for the Extended News Preview expires in a few days and it looks like Google doesn't want to renew it. Other small news sites are reporting the same thing. First they let small sites rank worse and worse (Discover has been dead with me for weeks), then they exclude the sites from the ENP, turning off another money spigot. I wouldn't be surprised if my site is kicked out of Google News at the end of June, exactly when the contract expires. It's just ridiculous and the fact that they get away with it shows once again quite clearly that this company can do whatever it wants.

By the way, I'm really glad I don't serve the American market. Having just read this, I really wonder what the people in charge of AI companies are actually smoking ...

[searchengineland.com ]

searchengineland.com Perplexity Pages showing in Google AI Overviews, featured snippets Yes, you can now find AI overviews generated by the Perplexity search engine in your Google AI Overviews and Search results.

[Conro]

Yesterday I asked ChatGPT a question. I asked him a question that interests WhatsApp. After he replied I asked him what his source was and if he had permission to use it. He replies that there was no need for sources because they were common processes with other users. I tell him that he can't invent anything, but can only take content written by others. He replies that I'm right and gives me a WhatsApp source that had nothing to do with it apart from the keyword and a link to Google that referred to a page that no longer existed. How beautiful are these spinners

[Mark_A]

I tried to get ChatGPT to differentiate between two websites with similar but slightly different urls, eventually it seemed to comprehend, then I asked if it could remember that for the next time, it seems it can't do that bit so is destined to repeat the same wrong answer an nauseam.

Incidentally @Conro, I don't think ChatGPT is a he, I think it is an it! :)

[Conro]

True , but I don't know how to define it, it's like angels, without sex

[Dooku]

To build your mailing list, get creative with your offers

LOL! Someone did a "Perplexity" job on my post from the first page on this thread.

Yep, the internet is definitely declining and heading into a downward spiral.

[not2easy]

Well spotted Dooku. That post had been reported, now removed. ;)

[NeapTide]

@Conro

It's normal with Uncle SamGPT and Ms Gemini to show wrong references or provide references from dead websites or removed pages.

The copyrighted stuff that these tools are feeding they are obliged to show wrong references so that they don't get caught where exactly they stole the information from.

[Conro]

@NeapTide It makes me think about the fact that the information comes from the cache. Is it a coincidence that google removed it from the search engine?

[ichthyous]

A few unrelated observations:
1) Google search dropped off a cliff again this morning at 6am EST and has stayed at exactly the same low level for more than 3 hours...welcome to the work week, where all your traffic vanishes for the entire day until the eve...and yesterday not even that

2) Bing sent a webmaster panel report...the searches are atrocious. Absolutely ridiculous terms being searched to find my site, some of them are just incoherent and others are searches for other businesses it looks like. If these are the top searches making it to my site then I will ignore Bing completely

3) Has anyone tried removing text from pages to see if the pages recover from any kind of over-optimization penalty? I had a plugin stop working on my site...it adds unique text to each page so the text disappeared. One of the pages where the text vanished jumped up 40+ spots in an extremely competitive high-volume search. Wondering if I would be better off removing some of the text and testing to see if my ranking actually goes up. If so, it would seem that they have really ratcheted up some sort of over-optimization algo.

[BigKat]

Google search dropped off a cliff again this morning at 6am EST and has stayed at exactly the same low level for more than 3 hours.

SERP trackers show some volatility today, but here in the USA Google has our organic results buried so deep that very few users have seen them since early 2023. Therefore, we really don't notice Google's updates as most of our sales are coming from other sources while Google remains dead.

[Shepherd]

Now we need this civil action on the google ads/search side. google using their search dominance combined with shady ad pricing/clicks to fleece customers and shakedown businesses. I bet an ambitious AG could even package up the criminal side in a nice little RICO box.

[bbc.com...]

www.bbc.com Google must face £13bn advertising lawsuit - UK court The search giant's parent Alphabet called the case 'incoherent' in arguments to get the case dropped.

[ichthyous]

Going to post this as a separate post... Has anyone tried removing text from pages to see if the pages recover from any kind of over-optimization penalty? I had a plugin stop working on my site...it adds unique text to each page so the text disappeared. One of the pages where the text vanished jumped up 40+ spots in an extremely competitive high-volume search. Wondering if I would be better off removing some of the text and testing to see if my ranking actually goes up. If so, it would seem that they have really ratcheted up some sort of over-optimization algo.

[not2easy]

That BBC article was posted here: [webmasterworld.com...]

[boost12]

Replying to ichthyous

I have noticed the page on my site with barely any text went up and all the rest of my long form pages went down. It is still early but I think you are onto something!

[Shepherd]

One of the pages where the text vanished jumped up 40+ spots

I would guess it is simply google seeing the page change, random shuffling and gathering data.

[Micha]

@ichthyous Do you use WordPress? With the last update, the “lastmod date element” was added, which should be quite helpful according to Google. If you are using WP, this may be the reason

[tom_010101]

Hi @Micha,

How can I test this lastmod date for sitemaps to see if it is active and working for me?

[Conro]

@tom_010101 go to domainame/wp-sitemap.xml and open the sitemap

[Micha]

@tom_010101 If the URL from Conro does not work, then it is sitemap_index.xml and then open a post sitemap there.

[not2easy]

The URL to look for is the one you put in your robots.txt file.

[sk7411]

After a superb record breaking traffic , we have been dropping since yesterday!

[Conro]

If you are using the wordpress sitemap you must use /wp-sitemap.xml. Of course it's useful to Google, so if a site didn't have publication and modification dates, now Google will be able to more easily find older pages and deindex or demote them. Google just wants fresh stuff for its AI, the rest has already been crawled and assimilated

[christianz]

Weak traffic today and in general since June 4th / late June 3rd.

[Shepherd]

Have a travel related website affected negatively by google updates? Not to worry, the public is being served.

google Travel now ranking in the number 1 spot for "travel" AND "flights". Someone at google Travel must have access to the current "ranking factors" not that stinky old list that was leaked not too long ago.

They are even trying to rebrand the word "flights" to "google flights".

There are still good people at google. Unfortunately I don't think there are enough to mount a successful rebellion or alternative.

[superclown2]

google Travel now ranking in the number 1 spot for "travel" AND "flights"

What are they thinking of? They have already been fined heavily on this side of the pond for favouring their own services like this. Are they so contemptuous of legislation?