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]

[Dooku]

Most of the members will have heard about the blog post on HouseFres(dot)com how google is killing their website and other small companies.
The owner has posted a very interesting UPDATE on the downright abhorrant methods of large publishing companies, and it's VERY DISTURBING:
[housefresh.com...]

housefresh.com HouseFresh disappeared from Google Search results. Now what? We sounded the alarm about independent publishers being demoted on Google to give way to big media sites. This is what happened next.

[sk7411]

They are onto something , dropping since a few days!

[ichthyous]

The HouseFresh article is very informative, but it's not anything we all didn't suspect already. Google can easily destroy these tactics but doesn't want to...these companies are a huge revenue stream for them. They are working hand in hand in a tacit, unspoken agreement. It will take government intervention to clean it up. Either that, or people will get so sick of the poor quality of the articles returned and they'll lose market share...that doesn't seem to be happening fast enough.

[EditorialGuy]

The HouseFresh article is very informative, but it's not anything we all didn't suspect already.

I confess to having been unaware that "content swarming" was an actual strategy, and many of the specifics in the article were illuminating to me. So thanks, Dooku, for sharing the link!

[Micha]

TheHouseofFresh is unfortunately a good example of how Google and large publishers are cracking down on small websites. Publishers always come up with “content swarming” when they realize that a website with a certain topic is successful. This can be observed time and time again.

Now to my website: After a pretty bad Friday and Saturday, Sunday was very strong and my stats are already showing good numbers this morning. (I'm only talking about Google traffic). What I find interesting is that, according to Search Console, I had more impressions on Saturday than I've had for a long time, but very few clicks.

And as for the store, exactly the same: hardly any sales on Friday, dead on Saturday, record sales on Sunday.

[tom_010101]

Micha, then we can only congratulate you. For me, every day is worse than the day before, and that has been the case since August 2023. I will probably end my self-employment at the end of the summer after 22 years.

[superclown2]

I confess to having been unaware that "content swarming" was an actual strategy,

I would be careful with this. Google are supposed to prefer sites that stick to their main subject so if yours is about green gerbils and you start a section on unicorn insurance maybe it could cause you damage (unless you pay a fortune for Google ads of course).

[Micha]

@tom It's also a hell of a lot of work. However, what my team and I do is not witchcraft, but can also be easily implemented on other websites. I've already listed a few things for you, but I'd be happy to send you everything in detail again. You are also welcome to come to my team chat and see how we work. Maybe that will help you find a way for yourself. And as far as implementation is concerned, I offer you my help.

One thing is important though: if you've been running a website for years, you become rigid because it works. We are now in a phase where everything is changing and it no longer works, so you have to be prepared to break new ground. And very importantly, you can't get stuck on Google. Yes, G is important, but market leader or not, there are other sources and you have to use them.

We didn't do anything differently with my magazine. The bottom line is: we are becoming more independent of Google, because our figures are now stable, even when Google traffic is bad, like on Friday or Saturday. And I only look at Google on the side (and to be honest: that's a relief after the stress of the last few months)

[RedBar]

Ok, many may not like this however I tried reading that housefresh article and got bored, apart from Forbes I had not heard of any of the other business / sites mentioned. Is this because I don't take any personal interest in the US market these days, possibly.

For me all these aggressive take-overs and out-doing each other has been going on all my business life, since the 60s, and are typical of societies with so-called highly-educated people trying to get rich quick and prove their worth and value to someone without actually doing any productive work ... It's all speculation and in many cases running a supposed business on as much debt it can acquire meanwhile paying themselves phenomenal amounts of money.

If these shenanigans are having any effect on your business that's unfortunate but is this affect solely as an affiliate marketing site trying to earn a sales commission or as a real-world producer with real-world products?

Breaking news for those who have not yet realised. These sites are, for many, the new High Street, the new classified ads, the attempted eyeball and listening collectors, the attempted new marketeers trying to use www search manipulations as their tools.

Some will survive, many will die.

[ichthyous]

And as for the store, exactly the same: hardly any sales on Friday, dead on Saturday, record sales on Sunday.

Traffic was well under trend from around April 21st through June 5th for me. From the 5th to today traffic snapped back to normal, and even fairly strong. I am getting inquiries and calls, but the customers still aren't purchasing...they have low budgets. Still, at least its better than no traffic and no inquiries like the prior 6 weeks. I won't take it for granted, I am still looking at ways to diversify away from Google asap.

[mosxu]

Apple intelligence based on openAI is coming with no ad blocker!

Are we going to see competition probably not!

[Markedd]

I know that some of you assumed it was going to happen and it did happen. As I said a few posts before, I have moved to YouTube and still kept the website for script purposes. The site is not on Google at all right now, but I did check Gemini to see what it will show when checking for the info I wrote. Bear in mind that I am the only person of the Internet that creates this content, so when the website died, an entire niche disappeared. What do you think Gemini showed? Indeed, it was parts of the website and curiously, some info from my videos as well. So there you have it. Additional proof that the websites were removed to make way for the AI. Also, be very aware that the 'AIs' can steal content from YouTube videos as well.

[Fluff_Nutz]

Toxic fools. Just tried to search for a few random articles of mine. Articles that were, once, doing incredibly well. Brought a lot of traffic in. Now I cannot see them on the Google SERP anywhere. So I can definitely see the possibility of G removing these articles and adding them to their AI. Then not showing it to prevent the potential copyright backlash.

I can still find some of my articles on Yandex, though on the second page. It was on page 1 but at least I can still find it. (Oh, hold on. I spot an article on page 1 after all. It even ranks higher than a competitor that usually dominates everything else. incredible! As for Bing. Well this is new, for me anyway, they now have a huge row of Youtube videos. Did they do a deal with Google? Are they not meant to be competitors? It's like a huge gang of idiots being lead by Google. Do your own version of Youtube Bing ffs!

Bing is such a disappointment. I'll admit I don't use them but they now have just as much clutter, why? It's like looking at the Google SERP but with Bing written on it. After the Youtube videos we have 2 large snippets. Followed then by the same useless names that is already dominating other search engines. I generally thought that Bing was better than this. PAA is also here, interesting. What a continuation of mess. Though, unlike with Google my articles are still there. Though, again, on page 2.

Desperate companies mimicking each other. I'll be honest I use neither Google or Bing and I'm really not regretting it. (Edit: Just noticed I have an article on page 1 with Bing. Whilst the only thing, after a brief search, that ranks on page 1 with Google is my Reddit post. Hmmm... Could be worse but I do miss my 4,000 daily visitors. I'm now down to 300 instead. I'm trying to rally my writers to become more consistent but if that fails I am out. I am also yet to hear back from Mediavine regarding what they want to do with my site. But if they remove me its also over.

[superclown2]

I generally thought that Bing was better than this.

Bing always was an incoherent mess. Now it's far, far worse. Plus they STILL hide the fact that the ads are, well, ads and not generics. At least Google label them clearly. And yes, why are they featuring so many YouTube videos? They don't seem to have ads in them so what's in it for them? Do they really think that people looking for quick answers want to watch the same boring junk over and over again?

Still, having spent billions on putting AI into their 'search engine' only to find that their market share has barely budged (worldwide they have gained less than one percentage point) perhaps they are desperate to try anything at all in the hope that they can finally succeed. All this will do will make them even less relevant than they already are.

[jchiff]

Google has apparently given up on "organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful.”

So what could their new mission statement sound like?

[theconversation.com...]

theconversation.com Google's use of AI to power search shows its problematic approach to organizing information Google's use of artificial intelligence to power its searches is an alarming development, especially considering how search engines are driven by financial interests.

[mosxu]

AI is looking to maximise profits and algo is actually attacking us!

The organic shopping listings were filled with some small businesses now only high street store’s listings ?

[Dooku]

Google has apparently given up on "organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful.”

Hear hear! Finally a good explanation and analysis of AI and it's results.

From the article:
"To be crystal clear, LLMs are not a form of intelligence, artificial or otherwise. They cannot “reason.” For LLMs, the only truth is the truth of the correlation among the contents of its database."

I have mentioned several times here there is NOTHING artificial and certainly NOTHING "intelligence" about AI.
This article explains very well that because of how "AI" e.g. simple decision tree algo's work, then by definition these problems can NEVER be fixed! Google, as usual is talking BS when they say they will fix the issues we have seen in the past weeks. They can only adjust manually for those examples, they can NOT fix the REAL underlying issues.

This means that googlers exactly know what they are doing, they are not stupid, but instead are plain evil.
Corrupting the worlds data all because of business profits is never a good idea, this will go from bad to worse.

[jchiff]

"Google. We put the glue in pizza."

[ichthyous]

Perhaps someone can shed some light on when and why the search results all switched to showing only shopping results for broad swaths of searches? Clearly someone at Google decided that everyone in the world is looking ONLY for shopping results for a wide range of searches that used to rank a mixture of results. Dozens of searches are showing mostly the same online store results over and over, and it's so crowded with tiny thumbnails and prices that the whole thing is a mess. Has anyone noticed this in their niche too? If you aren't an online store you just vanished completely for all of these terms. How does this benefit Google?

[EditorialGuy]

Dozens of searches are showing mostly the same online store results over and over, and it's so crowded with tiny thumbnails and prices that the whole thing is a mess. Has anyone noticed this in their niche too?

I haven't seen much of this, but every now and then a SERP like the ones you've described crops up in my informational searches. I've also noticed that Google seems to give --more weight to "content marketing" than it should. For example, in a search for Widgetville local bus fares, Google's top organic result might be a quasi-informational page that's selling local bus tickets for Widgetville. That's just weird.

[Dooku]

Clearly someone at Google decided that everyone in the world is looking ONLY for shopping results for a wide range of searches

It's the best their "AI" can do from calculating the probability of "what you mean" using their tens of thousands of GPU's in the google datacenters. I am starting to notice more of the same also.....sigh.

[Whitey]

@jchiff - great article and thanks for surfacing it.

The closing paragraphs were so on point, i thought:

Access to knowledge
The societal damage from having to depend on a corrupted knowledge-organizing process is difficult to overstate. Access to sound knowledge is essential to every part of society. Google’s advertising dependence and dataist ideology have driven it to the point where it is actively sabotaging our knowledge ecosystem.

This sabotage requires a stiff regulatory response. To put it bluntly, Google Search needs to be run by people with the ethics of librarians, not tech bros.

To get there, governments need to establish minimum acceptable standards for Search to ensure that it produces sufficiently high-quality results. These standards should include forbidding links between advertising and search results, as well as the use of search data to fuel personalized advertising.

Further, search companies, and all global platforms, need to be brought under domestic democratic oversight, but remain inter-operable across borders, in co-ordination with fellow like-minded democratic countries.

None of these steps will be easy. But unless we are OK with continuing to delegate the organization of the world’s information to a reckless, profit-driven company that doesn’t see a problem with releasing a product that tells people it’s healthy to eat rocks, we don’t really have a choice but to bring Google to heel.

PS - i was somewhat irritated by the response from Elizabeth Tucker, Googler Responsible For The March Core Update, interviewed by @rustybrick . What can i say other than the responses seemed to lack authenticity and be more like an attempt of Google coolaid/PR.

The search results are cr*p. The communication process is cr*p. Why is Google continuing to blow it's own, out of tune, self acclaiming trumpet. It sounds to me like political like PR nonsense with everyone paid to keep their jobs marching to the corporate/political party doctrine. But then again, who believes a politician, and then what should we realistically expect.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate @rustybrick securing an interview, and convening polite conversation, but ........

Maybe in 20 years regulators will finally wake up to a series of minimum standards, as per The Conversation article.

[seroundtable.com...]

www.seroundtable.com SMX Interview Of Elizabeth Tucker Of Google Yesterday at SMX Advanced, I interviewed the Google executive who announced the March 2024 core update on the main Google blog. I asked Elizabeth Tucker a boatload of questions around SEO, the core update, the helpful content update, the search data leak and of course AI Overviews.

[jchiff]

@Whitey Yeah, the talking heads are paid handsomely for the spin no?

As an interesting side note, I'm reminded of a quote by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt who said "the Internet is a cesspool", and that "trusted brands are the solution". This was in 2008.

[ichthyous]

Very strong traffic this week, including a big jump up in the number of top 3 and top 10 ranking terms just this week. Today there is a huge surge in traffic from everywhere in the world, except for the USA (-30%) and Canada (-23%):

The United Kingdom
+133%
The United States
-30%
The United Arab Emirates
+112%
France
+131%
India
+98%
The Netherlands
+189%
Germany
+73%
Canada
-23%
Turkey
+594%

Anyone else seeing this? The surge in traffic has resulted in no new inquiries since the 10th, not one!...very interesting.

[Fluff_Nutz]

Opposite day today. But that is because I still use GA4. Apparently for myself and many others it is bugged. The traffic is showing a -90% drop. Realtime traffic is at the slowest it has ever been. None of this makes sense and apparently everyone else is in the same boat. Hence bugged. But it is Google property so... I really need to find a free equivalent version. Trusting anything with Google written on it is becoming tedious and a recipe for disaster.

[mhansen]

Also, be very aware that the 'AIs' can steal content from YouTube videos as well.

@MarkDD - I'd propose that Google Chrome the browser, and Android operating systems are the culprits in consuming the data and training the LLM's. With all that we know about how Google is continuing to operate, I put absolutely nothing past them at this point, including building systems into the browser base code and operating systems on mobile devices that they control, to pipe every single bit of data processed, into their LLM engines.

[Markedd]

@mhansen Add iOS, MacOS, Windows OS, Adobe suite, SONOS and many more to the list...

[ichthyous]

USA traffic is dying again...last two days way down the entire day, and then suddenly surges at the end of the day to break even. I hardly think that is a real traffic pattern, and the complete lack of any new sales inquiries this week proves it. My last actual sale was three weeks ago. That is impossibly bad...I am beginning to think that everyone has stopped spending completely in expectation of a recession. Are people seeing a decline in sales from other (non-Google) channels? I don't sell via amazon and other sources.

[seokees]

I don't know what you guys sell, but I think my site is in a completely different category, in a different country, but seeing the same decline after decline in conversions and traffic drops. I dont sell products, just leads in the home improve. But the same isssue. And traffic is on avg. really low and bounces back a few times a day. Very weird pattern.

So overall the 'internet' (so, Google) is dying (sounds ridicilous) if you look at a good portion of sites. Like people stop using the internet. In real decline in just a matter of months, in my case.

[Micha]

I see that the European Championships are starting now. My website is almost dead at the moment. Apart from that, I have to say that the traffic is still stable, even the Discover traffic came back for two days. However, exactly what I expected has happened: Google is not renewing the ENP contract, only the big publishers are still getting money, many small publishers I've spoken to have all lost their contracts.

[edited by: Micha at 7:06 pm (utc) on Jun 14, 2024]