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]

[universenet]

In past publishers have been friends to google, and google always said how many publishers websites working together for google.
But today publishers are one of biggest enemies for google because google does not want share anthing with anybody, so in that name google pushing in top search websites like quora and similar what does not have advertising, this is all tactic what google using, just this, so all crazy results in search are because selfish search giant what want earn maximum from own search only and of course maximum show how AI Gemini is so good and smart and no need "stupid" publishers, all results in "SERP" are because that selfish idea

[christianz]

google does not want share anthing with anybody

I don't like that phrasing. It implies that Google has something to share.

Other than YouTube, it's just us (our websites) sharing our profits WITH THEM. Makes no sense to eliminate those profit sharers and content sources...

[christianz]

Traffic has been relatively OK and steady for past 7 days. However Ahrefs shows nonstop decline in keywords for couple weeks.

[universenet]

I don't like that phrasing. It implies that Google has something to share.

@christianz
yes,google always share money with publishers in way how want
( i do not like that phrasing too)
1. google getting money from adversers
2. google decide how big part will be for publishers
3. google send to publishers part how much google want
This is sharing of income, is nothing with contract about content value of your website and you never know how big part google take, you can just imagine, so is just sharing money, but even that is smaller and smaller with time, only publishers are not in good position because google has monopol

[superclown2]

We are witnessing a lemming-like rush into a technology that is incredibly expensive to set up and run, whilst a tried-and-tested system (search engines providing links to websites, and monetising it with a few (not too many!) ads, is being abandoned. No-one seems to have considered whether or not the public want this. Let's look at the facts:

1) Bing was the first to offer AI generated results and yet worldwide their share of the search market has hardly budged.
2) Google's foray into it has made it a laughing stock, apart from costing them huge sums to set it all up.
3) The results that this technology provides can never be relied on.
4) There are massive concerns about copyright which have yet to be fully tested in courts throughout the world.
5) Legislators don't understand it and so are fearful of it. This will bring in even more legislation and court battles to reign it in.
7) Search engines are providing answers themselves, rather than being just intermediaries, leaving themselves open to potentially massive damages if 'hallucinations' result in harm to people who relied on them for advice.

I remember the chaos of the late 90s when there were dozens of search engines, all fighting for a slice of the same cake. They were wiped out by an upstart which worked hard to provide links to the most relevant websites, using a clean and uncluttered interface. Google has since, under the influence of Wall Street, become a bloated monster designed to make the maximum amount of money, rather than provide the best and most helpful search experience.

Perhaps we need such an upstart again, rather than a whole mass of 'me toos' creating even more confusing information, all of which has the same defects as those listed above.

This AI frenzy will all end in tears.

[mosxu]

@ichthyous

Zombies are not necessarily from Vietnam, these are in your local market more like click fraudsters who spend a lot of time on your site! But also click on organic and therefore probably not human. It has been reported here that these spend a lot of time and so but if you watch hotjar movies of their journey they make a lot of illogical moves!

The impossible thing is for these zombies to also make your genuine traffic to disappear :))

[Micha]

Pretty good article about Perplexity. The company shamelessly steals content and even ignores Robots.txt.

And all we can do is watch, really demotivating.

[wired.com ]

[Conro]

Google is really annoying to use. All those forums just make me want to close google as soon as possible. I tried today after a search to use forums, but between answers from 2013, not answers, I'll let you know, solutions that don't work in the end I asked ChatGPT which provided me with a great completely invented answer. I then switched to perplexity and it gave me the solutions that didn't work in my case, despite the sources reporting them as working. I finally found something from Bing that answered my query from a YouTube video. What a struggle. I don't know what's going on but they all look like amateur services in disarray

[superclown2]

they all look like amateur services in disarray

They have all been infected with the same AI hysteria. The problem is that some of them have spent so much money on it they can't admit, perhaps even to themselves, that it has all been one enormous mistake. The crash may be a while off but it will certainly come. Fancy buying some tulip bulbs, anyone? Poseidon shares? NFTs? Great investments.

[Micha]

Fancy another rollercoaster ride? Google rolls out a spam update

[x.com ]

[Conro]

Here the only spam site now is google

[christianz]

Traffic on my sites seems to be down. And there are reports of authority spam (outlook-youknowhat etc) getting boost. Standard spam update?

[universenet]

Maybe with google new spam update all our websites will become spam,and only google and his Gemini will stay king

That spam updates starting to be a comedy
I did write before a year or two that internet will be like in North Korea,
will not be visible anything
Seems we are not very far from that.
I have some websites and honestly just like a hobby, I do not live from that,
but I am not sure who will be possible even have some serious income from internet websites soon if that manipulation continue, and seems will continue

[EditorialGuy]

Visits and pageviews for our main site have been up substantially in the last few days, mostly due to a lot of traffic on one evergreen article that isn't timely or newsworthy.

What's odd is that Reddit was one of our top referrers one day, while LinkedIn was in that role the next day. Normally we don't get more than a trickle of traffic (if any) from either Reddit or LinkedIn.

[superclown2]

What's odd is that Reddit was one of our top referrers one day, while LinkedIn was in that role the next day. Normally we don't get more than a trickle of traffic (if any) from either Reddit or LinkedIn.

That's probably because Reddit and Linkedin are now major beneficiaries of Google's strange algorithm, that sends visitors to sites where people discuss different subjects that most of them don't understand, rather than straight to the expert sites that can actually provide answers. Like the male Holly in Red Dwarf, age is not being kind to Google.

[ichthyous]

USA/Canada traffic is down hugely this morning. USA is -58% at 11am and CA is at zero visits. I am seeing huge swings in traffic for some landing pages again...as much as -81% this morning, despite having risen in ranking to the #1 spot. Perhaps an overnight shakeup. Fridays also tend to be very low traffic since last year.

[Sissi]

[searchengineland.com...]

Good Luck

[superclown2]

Our positions in the SERPs are far higher than they were three months ago. Our earnings have fallen by a half. The reason? Google manipulation. What I am seeing is:

1) Ads with multiple boxes; I am looking at some right now that each almost fill the whole page on my Samsung Note 10
2) Multiple PAA and PASF 'enhancements'
3) A new 'enhancement' on me: 'Things you need to know'
4) Longer 'enhancements': I got use to them holding 4 boxes but now I see six or seven sometimes
5) Boxes of YouTube videos (all containing ads, naturally)

Clearly they are scrabbling to hit earnings targets before the axes fall.

[RedBar]

Bear in mind I am a real world, 100% exporter of specialised products, one of the top 5 in India and a major exporter to China.

Our order books for our standard products are looking normal for this time of year and we have these records going back to 1970. Our enquiries from regular project customers is also looking normal. What is not normal is the absolute dearth of enquiries from potential new project customers especially so from the "west".

The scamdemic and its knock-on effects appears to have induced a malaise in many societies and governments that are unable to get people back to a productive work ethic and especially so in large cities now seeing many unattended and empty buildings.

Overall this is bound to have a detrimental effect on any country's economy and thereby anything that happens on The Net.

[ichthyous]

Our positions in the SERPs are far higher than they were three months ago. Our earnings have fallen by a half. The reason? Google manipulation. What I am seeing is:

1) Ads with multiple boxes; I am looking at some right now that each almost fill the whole page on my Samsung Note 10
2) Multiple PAA and PASF 'enhancements'
3) A new 'enhancement' on me: 'Things you need to know'
4) Longer 'enhancements': I got use to them holding 4 boxes but now I see six or seven sometimes
5) Boxes of YouTube videos (all containing ads, naturally)

Clearly they are scrabbling to hit earnings targets before the axes fall.

I am not seeing many of these PAA and PASF enhancements (yet) in my niche because it is based on searches for specific types of images / products and not informational searches. But sales have been dropping nonetheless since the end of 2023 like a stone. For these types of searches google has created a hard segmentation and switched the results to online stores only...and usually the same ones over and over.

They are also putting huge blocks of sponsored products at the top of the searches now, and that is siphoning off a lot of traffic. I have also noticed that the bounce rate from Google traffic is much higher than it used to be...they aren't staying long enough to even inquire.

Has anyone tried running sponsored product ads, and do they actually produce any conversions? Lord knows the text ads are basically useless.

[edited by: ichthyous at 4:53 pm (utc) on Jun 22, 2024]

[Micha]

Do you actually still see search results without a bunch of ads, YouTube, etc.?

In my opinion, the product ads only bring zombie traffic, at least that's what I'm seeing with the online store I'm currently managing. The ads that the owner has placed have not led to any sales in the month so far, at least not measurable ones. And the Google Ad support is the most ridiculous support I have ever experienced. I'm sorry, but all I can say is that you have to deal with absolute nutters there who give bad tips and obviously have no idea about current law (explaining to a customer that you can install the convention code without a cookie banner is just one example of the stupid tips that Google Support gave the owner)

An absolute waste of money ...

@ichthyos I can confirm the bounce rate, by the way.

[ichthyous]

Do you actually still see search results without a bunch of ads, YouTube, etc.?

@Micha...no, what I mean to say is the AI enhancements such as PAA. I see tons of sponsored product ads, text ads, Youtube videos, etc. Thanks for the feedback on the product ads. I had an online store years ago and got rid of it. From 2015-now I have been doing business just fine from people submitting pricing inquiries from forms on my site. Now I am considering implementing ecommerce again but it will be a huge task due to the number of items, sizes, customizations, etc. I am wondering if it's even worth the hassle. But Google is ranking ONLY ecomm platforms for many searches now. In other words, what I am seeing this year is that if you don't have products with public prices, ratings, and which can be purchased immediately via online checkout you will vanish for all of those searches. Google has been doing this for a while...either their AI or their user data decided that search X is a product search and it only offers stores. Back in 2021 or 2022 it was the same thing, but it only offered top 10 lists, how to articles, etc. That was equally disastrous.

[EditorialGuy]

Do you actually still see search results without a bunch of ads, YouTube, etc.?

Depends on the "etc." and the topic. For many of the informational queries that I check from time to time, the problem isn't ads or even YouTube videos--it's the AI overview, "People also ask," and other Google "walled garden" results.

[RedBar]

Google's SERPs has turned into a horrible mess for my widgets and do I have to assume DDG is plugged-in to G because its results are also becoming equally dire and irrelevant ... Altogether shocking results for me today.

[superclown2]

I have to assume DDG is plugged-in to G because its results are also becoming equally dire and irrelevant

I'm seeing the same. Bing are mimicking Google in the misguided belief that they can become successful that way, and DDG gets it's results via Google and Bing.

The world needs a search engine that actually produces the best search results for a given query. Neeva may well have been been that search engine, had they not been strangled at birth by Google's monopoly.

[Treud]

My position and traffic seems more natural but yet , countries that try to converts are still not targeted ones.

[ichthyous]

Conversions have really been very low going back to around Oct/Nov 2023 as far as I can tell, but it's getting worse. I am getting a trickle of inquiries, sometimes with 5-6 days in between, and none of them have a serious budget so they are pretty much a waste of time. I would say it's the economy and election year issues in the US, but inquiries have stopped completely from UK, CA, AU, EU and Middle East...literally down to zero. This is while the number of terms I am ranking Top 3 and top 10 on has been increasing for weeks and traffic is much more stable. It's just not good quality traffic anymore.

On another note...I was wondering how many of you block traffic from India? India is #3-#4 highest referrer on my site, but all they do is steal my images and then infringe on them or spam my forms with cheap services...my items are far too high priced to sell there. I have the country on Managed Challenge in CF but these are valid visits, not just bots so makes no difference.

[Micha]

It's going semi well again at the moment. Fortunately, my news site is doing quite well with minimal traffic from Google. However, there has been an abnormal increase in requests for guest articles. At least 15 requests per day and a lot of money is being offered. I wonder what this nonsense is all about for a site that hardly has any traffic from Google.

In the store, however, sales have fallen to an absolute minimum after a very good Thursday. The advertising only brings zombie traffic, but no sales, but costs a lot of money. It simply remains a waste of money to advertise on Google, I hope he stops after the 4 weeks because the owner sees it himself.

So everything as usual ...

[universenet]

Every day google changing number of indexed pages for every website on google search,
and it is not small changing,
example if you have 100 000 indexed pages on oogle search, google show sometimes 30 000, somtimes,90 000, somtimes 50 000,somtimes 10 000
and with all other manipulations is more of enough ..

[Micha]

Google: Affiliate is useless for users, so we penalize it. Google too, a few weeks later ... tests exactly what they found useless. So all the updates are nothing more than making room for Googles own offers.

[x.com ]

[universenet]

Google: Affiliate is useless for users, so we penalize it. Google too, a few weeks later ... tests exactly what they found useless. So all the updates are nothing more than making room for Googles own offers.

Everyone with Affiliate website is going to teritory of google now...
Affiliate will be reserved only for google, and for other websites what try to use affiliate will be damage...

[Dooku]

Google: Affiliate is useless for users, so we penalize it

So the barrel is now practically empty, now google wants their fingers in our wallets? What's next? The moment you buy a new domain name and want to go online you receive an email from google, "first deposit $100 or we will not index you! And make sure you get one of those credit cards first to pay that $100, so we can also make some commission on that too!"

[ichthyous]

Yesterday traffic was in the tank the entire day...both search and direct traffic, and from every region. Today USA is at -50% at 11am...it dropped off a cliff at 9am sharp again. It seems the old pattern of USA traffic disappearing during prime business hours is back.

[Markedd]

I have some more depressive news unfortunately. I noticed that both Bing and especially DDG have started to follow Google's footsteps, prioritizing similar website (high authority + forums), so if you were hoping that an alternative search engine would fix things, it won't.

[Juniya]

@Markedd - I noticed that too, I am not surprised with DDG because they mostly use Bing's listings so once I noticed the trend on Bing, I knew the other smaller ones would follow. SMH...Devastating news, surprising? No.

Perhaps it's time to start thinking of exit plans from this industry after all these years smh...

[mosxu]

“Exit plans”

Unfortunately some of us put years of hard work and did not think how singularity works!

Big tech will slowly exterminate 90% of small businesses!

[Micha]

A look at the Search Console data: Impressions and clicks collapsed. A look at Google News: Even more fake news and pages that rank with articles that are updated once a day (no new text, just a new date).

So, as always, the spam update only seems to affect smaller sites. This slow death is annoying, Google should at least be honest for once and say that they no longer want us or that we have become useless to them.

[mosxu]

Of course they will not tell you are not needed, at this point probably they stopped feeding AI with some of us work and therefore spam updates will reflect that!

[Treud]

I receive more and more of emails of websites selling links, looks like they push so hard to collect money before it’s all gone….

[Micha]

@Treud I get more and more offers per day to set links and they offer more and more money. It's so stupid ...

[RedBar]

Several of us have commented about the poor DDG results at the moment. I have to admit that the few times I have tried Perplexity it has been mostly accurate about my widgets.

Global site - After several days of much lower than average traffic it has picked-up back to average for me, at the moment.

UK hotel site - Its traffic is normal. Whilst business / family travellers are regular site visitors for accommodation almost all other traffic is people checking live music gigs and restaurant menus. This is remarkably consistent traffic all year round.

The one "concern" we have is for this weekend which is our biggest charity event weekend of the year and has always been extremely successful however it's also Glastonbury weekend and what does this quite often mean? Rain!

We're on the opposite side of the country in one of the driest regions, fingers crossed.

[Mark_A]

.. it's also Glastonbury weekend and what does this quite often mean? Rain!

Also Wimbledon also means rain :) no escaping it ..

[ichthyous]

Bing and DDG are 3% of my search combined, hardly anything I would spend time thinking about...I wish it were different but Bing has never brought me a lot of traffic in the last 20 years.

International traffic is stronger, but USA is still highly suppressed. That's while my number of Top 3 ranking terms is still increasing daily for weeks. Google giveth, and in a few months google will taketh away...seen that pattern over and over

[Markedd]

@RedBar Unfortunately Perplexity is not a good company. Besides the whole article stealing and rewriting, it seems that it ignores robots.txt files where the webmaster tells it to not crawl the website. Honestly, I am appalled by how things continue to develop with these LLMs. New lows every day.

[RedBar]

Unfortunately Perplexity is not a good company.

And also unfortunately when nothing else is giving me decent search responses it creates a dilemma.

Look, we all know that G can do far, far better, it simply chooses not to do so therefore when needs must "we" are all forced into using something that, in reality, out of choice we would prefer not to do so.

[NeapTide]

Google is bringing back pagination and abandoning continuous scroll on desktop and mobile. So on 1st page out of 10 results you will get 3 Google garbage boxes (PPA, PASF) 2, 3 youtube videos, 3, 4 organic results from top websites and remaining web can rot on page number 2 and below.

Google is intentionally doing it because people were scrolling down past 10 results due to all the garbage being fed on top.

This company is getting more and more evil everyday.


[searchengineland.com...]

[Micha]

@NeapTide A thesis that supports your statement: Google now displays credit cards. WalletHub has taken a close look at this and lo and behold: if you rely on what Google displays, it can quickly become expensive. And this seems to apply to many products. So much for product recommendations should be for the user.

Source [x.com ]

[Shepherd]

google is intentionally (abandoning continuous scroll) because people were scrolling down past 10 results due to all the garbage being fed on top.

Of course they are... You can draw a short, straight line between EVERYTHING google does and the money.

I've made a little game out of seeing if I can scroll the generative AI off the screen before if renders... I call it F google

[mhansen]

I believe Google is desperately doing all they can to milk every penny out of every cushion they can find. I run a PPC campaign for a client and over the last year, we've seen our "branding" campaign go from the initial $2/click average, up to $8/click for the same exact match terms. There have been little to no changes in this specific ad campaign, and there are little to no competitors who bid on the company name. (I've never seen a single other ad on the company name).

Today, one of the opportunity campaigns saw a click of $95/cpc for an exact match 3-word phrase that for the last 3-4 weeks cost around $24/cpc for the same exact match query. (No, the higher cost did not convert either) They have no rules, no watchers, and no accountability for their actions, and I'm going to be hard-pressed to assure the company this is an anomaly and not Google shaking cushions to see how far they can push advertisers before they leave.

They have ruined their search engine to push ads and widgets. They are quickly ruining their ad market just the same.

[EditorialGuy]

According to RustyBrick's Search Engine Roundtable:

"Google told us this change enables them to serve faster results on more searches, instead of automatically loading results that users haven't explicitly requested."

IMO, that explanation sounds pretty reasonable. What's sacrosanct about continuous scroll, which is quite new in the overall scheme of things? As RustyBrick also points out, "Google launched continuous scroll on desktop in December 2022, 1.5 years ago, and continuous scroll on mobile search in October 2021, 2.5 years ago. "

Source: [seroundtable.com...]