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]

[Shepherd]

I wonder how many times this video is going to get played in court?

[x.com...]

And to be fair, she's not wrong, google can do what ever they want with their SERPs. What is going to get them is, once again, their greed. They can not have their cake and eat it to. Promoting their own properties while raking users and customers over the coals. Most people in google's current situation might dial it back, lay low, play it cool for a bit... not google, seems like they are going all in supernova scorched Earth on their way out. Hope the SEC is also paying attention, this may be the biggest pump and dump stock in history.

[Conro]

I'm seeing more and more sites that are stopping or being updated very rarely than before. Some have been abandoned for months now. The once precise SERPs are now replaced with sites with the most generic results possible and with forums everywhere or short superficial guides written by brands. I've noticed that Bing is also going the Google route, I've done some searches with completely wrong results. I don't know what's going on, but it looks like there's an intention to destroy the web,

[Juniya]

@Conro that is true, a lot of *established sites in some of my industries have stopped posting since that nail in the coffin, March update. It's a shame because a lot of these guys were putting out great information and I think in a few months, the internet will 'miss it'. It's a shame when you can only get the news or updates about certain things from the same usual 5 big companies/sites.

I still have a slither of hope that Google will reverse their core updates to let the smaller publishers back in but I wouldn't bet on it.

[RedBar]

Traffic for my global widget site for the last 7 days is -50%, if this continues the same until the end of this month then I shall remove the site completely from the SERPs leaving only a log-in page for international trade customers.

IMHO Google's "independence" vanished years ago therefore many of the more recent algo updates appear to be politically motivated. Welcome to your web sanitisation.

[ichthyous]

Right now my traffic reverted to what it was before the six weeks of incredibly poor traffic. Despite the much better traffic, no sales whatsoever. The inquiries are laughable...CEOs of companies asking to download files to DIY things rather than pay for them outright. New inquiries from everywhere in the world have vanished completely. UK, AU, CA, EU and UAE...all sending more traffic, but no inquiries compared to last year. And what is coming from USA is just useless.

Is this all due to Google? I think Google is definitely making sales leads harder to come by now, but we are looking at a global slowdown in spending. Two wars dragging on, prices for everything are sky high, and election year jitters.

[RedBar]

but we are looking at a global slowdown in spending.

In Western economies probably so, BRICS etc I am not seeing this, YMMV !

[brightstone]

@ichthyous What hasn't been realized, maybe by anyone yet, is that the people who were buying and spending online, a large number had an income of SOME kind, even if it was small, from the internet. Now that that income has dried up, there's less money to spend. If all of our websites were restored to previous positions and traffic, I think conversions would be harder to come by. Even the post office employees are worried about layoffs due to the lack of packages being brought in for mailing. One clerk who has seniority (and is thankful he won't be laid off) is calling it "scary slow".

[ichthyous]

What hasn't been realized, maybe by anyone yet, is that the people who were buying and spending online, a large number had an income of SOME kind, even if it was small, from the internet. Now that that income has dried up, there's less money to spend.

This doesn't apply to my business. I sell luxury items that sell for up to tens of thousands of dollars. My customers were always affluent at a minimum, or downright rich. That stratum has more money than ever due to the increase in asset prices...real estate, stocks, and even interest rates on cash. They have a ton of money increasing every day...and I am not seeing spending at all. It is also wrapped up with the real estate market...people aren't buying/selling that much now so no need to move. People not setting up as many new homes and not purchasing discretionary items.

Keep in mind that in the USA at least wages are growing. Wages are outstripping inflation, but the average salaried employee is feeling the impact of higher prices so they are tightenting up even if they are employed and making a good salary. The greed of corporations (making the highest profits since the 1960's) is strangling the goose.

[Markedd]

@ichthyous So..basically, a few rich people are holding the economy hostage. Let's wait for the trickling down. It's going to trickle at any moment. And to not be completely off-topic, I have seen some progress on a website created from redirects, so who knows?..

[Martin Ice Web]

@ichthyous, i join our club. Starting last friday, sales from google traffic fell of the cliff. And for sure it is google, because it started from 1 minute to the other.

And current UI is user unfriendly. Tricking users to click on ads.

-finding information on google leads in most cases to 10 year old rubbish sites with incorrect information. ( I only give google a try if i could not find something on bing )
-not to forget annoying spun article from big companies that just scratch the topic in order to get clicks on their affiliate sites. ( the 10 best, the 10 most ... )
-disregarding keywords in query

[Dooku]

Starting last friday, sales from google traffic fell of the clif

Since about first week of this month google is scraping the barrel really hardcore to meet second quarter revenue goals.
And that action is getting worse and worse each quarter for at least the past 2 to 3 years......and obviously will fail at some time when the peak has been reached because it's a zero sum game. We will all see what will happen at the first ever quarter when that trend breaks BIG time.

[Micha]

At least the big news sites are getting more visibility again, and visibility has to come from somewhere. I think we can all guess who is suffering again.

@martin Could it be that the Google results in Germany have deteriorated again since Monday?

And as for the shop's turnover, I'll go with that. It's exactly the same in the shop I'm currently working on.

[superclown2]

not to forget annoying spun article from big companies that just scratch the topic in order to get clicks on their affiliate sites.

Google used to penalise affiliate sites, or even drop them from their listings completely, because they claimed that they "offered a poor experience for visitors".

Now big sites that spend heavily on Google ads outrank the original creators of the products and services that they have affiliate pages for.

Why? Not because it makes them more money, at the expense of "offering a poor experience for visitors" surely? I think we all know the answer to that.

Meanwhile Google's "lobbying" efforts intensify ......[nypost.com ]

nypost.com Big Tech antitrust bill nears reintroduction on Capitol Hill — but could be thwarted by key Democrats The bill would block Big Tech firms from “self-preferencing” their own services — for example Google promoting its shopping tool in search results while demoting rival services.

[mosxu]

Do not count on Congress to do anything…

Last 3 days zombies over here, main purpose is to make us pay more…

[Martin Ice Web]

@Micha,

i can´t tell you cause i don´t use google because of its terrible UI.

[ichthyous]

Last 3 days zombies over here, main purpose is to make us pay more…

I have had higher traffic...potentially some of it zombie (i.e. Vietnam, SE Asia, etc). But most of it seems to be following real patterns...a very low conversion rate though and those that are sending inquiries are not viable.

Google has switched almost all searches which it believes have a commercial intent to show only ecomm/shopping sites on the page, whith many ecomm ads at the top too and a huge ecomm product carousel at top. If you don't show prices up front and don't have product ratings you are just screwed.

[Shepherd]

Traffic from google will likely never be viable for a business again.

google has all the data and sources it needs to understand which searchers are potential buyers and the value of those buyers.

With this knowledge, google can and does manipulate the SERPs to favor ads, encouraging buyers to click on them.

Moreover, google no longer relies on a large pool of advertisers to maximize its ad revenue. Instead of running a traditional auction, google sets the ad price and directs traffic to the site willing to accept the most negative cost-per-acquisition (CPA).

This scenario is ideal for google but disastrous for businesses and consumers.

[Micha]

In the USA, AI search engines are sprouting up like weeds. Fortunately, the trend has not yet arrived in the EU.

For Google, the air is getting thinner with every new provider and if the company doesn't get its act together soon and continues to deliver such lousy search results, then even the big name won't help much and it will noticeably lose market share.

[techcrunch.com ]

techcrunch.com Genspark is the latest attempt at an AI-powered search engine TechCrunch Genspark, a new search engine, is taking on startups like Perplexity with its AI-driven, summarized search results.

[Dooku]

In the USA, AI search engines are sprouting up like weeds

This is just the latest in the long line of capital investment attempts using the "AI" trend to try and collect as much money in a short amount of time. Some have flopped already....taking the investors money with it.
Ed Zitron described this trend already. It's also funny why most of these companies are coming from a certain region?(if you dig deeper who actually owns them). We now have AI toothbrushes and get this: AI paint.....I kid you not.

This will all go the way of NFT's soon....or the two wearable AI mini computers which have now been exposed as a SCAM....but hey they got their investors money collected. We just need to wait until too many investors(companies) get burned and loose money so they won't touch anything remotely AI again.

The YT video below explains how ironic it is that after several decades we have returned from a well designed UI (SERP) to a command line chat bot....it's just beyond stupid:
[youtube.com...]

[londrum]

I think its a fad as well. People use search engines to find websites. what's so great and amazing about being served up a computer written summary every time you search for something? Imagine getting all your information from one single source - google - forever.
It might work if their content was the best on the web, but its not.
Users will tire of it eventually.

[Micha]

We now have AI toothbrushes and get this: AI paint.....I kid you not.

Really now? I shouldn't ask, but why the hell do you need an AI toothbrush?

Of course, this is a trend, and it's not the first one we've seen, and we've seen many trends disappear quickly.

But this trend is extremely dangerous for Google because, as Londrum wrote, users will eventually get fed up. So if the top dog continues like this, it will be the first to be affected by this "fatigue".

[delorean]

GOOGLE SERP IN 2024 IN A NUTSHELL
>Reddit
>Quora
>LinkedIn
>YouTube/TikTok
>Forum Site
>Spam Site/High Authority Site
>Legit Independent/Small Sites, either lucky to be shown in search results or completely gone

Am I right or wrong?

[makintocheplus]

@delorean You are absolutely right 👍

There are lot of rumors that next core updates will fix the Serps but not 100%

[EditorialGuy]

[b][/b]

Google used to penalise affiliate sites, or even drop them from their listings completely, because they claimed that they "offered a poor experience for visitors".

For years, Google said that affiliate links were fine if the page provided a good user experience. (I remember that one of our pages was used in Google's Quality Rater Guidelines as an example of a useful page with affiliate links.) Google wasn't opposed to affiliate links (which are basically just a form of advertising), it was opposed to "pure play" affiliate sites.

The idea seemed to be that a page should be able to stand on its own and be useful if you stripped out the affiliate links. The page's content needed to provide a meaningful "value add." That's a reasonable rule of thumb, but it does allow for a grey area, and it's certainly possible that Google's algorithm, AI systems, etc. have trouble differentiating between, say, an informational page with affiliate links and a page that was created only to generate commissions. Even for humans, differentiating between the two can be difficult unless you're making a comparison between (to use an extreme example) a product-review page at a site like Wirecutter or Housefresh and a white-label affiliate page.

[EditorialGuy]

Question: What happened to phase 2 of the most recent Google Core Update, which was going to be about "site reputation abuse" or parasite SEO? Google gave advance warning of its new policy a few months ago, and the policy was supposed to take effect in early May. I haven't heard much discussion of this over the last month or so. Did the algorithmic portion of the "site reputation abuse" update ever launch? Or did it merely fizzle? One would expect to have seen hundreds of of angry complaints on Webmaster World and RustyBrick's Search Engine Roundtable by now.

[Markedd]

@makintocheplus Don't fall for it. Google has been saying this for almost a year now. They're lying.
@EditorialGuy I asked this question a while back as well and it seems that it may not have happened at all. At least no big brand was impacted, so I assume it was just some weird appeasement for the masses to show that they're willing to go after the big guys as well. They didn't.

[universenet]

There are lot of rumors that next core updates will fix the Serps but not 100%

@makintocheplus do you think fix will be before or after court? What rumors says?

[Shepherd]

happened to phase 2

google responded, late last week I believe, that the algo part has not rolled out yet. Maybe the manual actions missed revenue projections...

[RedBar]

Hey G, I bought 10 new phones today ... Did I use your search, no, did I use any other search, no, I went straight to the manufacturer's site where they have regular offers, 5 mins done and dusted and will be with me tomorrow.

[superclown2]

Am I right or wrong?

No. You missed out Forbes.