July 2024 Google Search Observations

[renatovieira]

Search Console frozen since friday. Has anyone else noticed?




[edited by: not2easy at 1:39 pm (utc) on Jul 1, 2024]

[christianz]

And keep in mind, everything I copyrighted I created from scratch at considerable expense

That is different. If images are unique and contain creativity, originality, art etc. But I have been trolled for images that were literally product photos on white background and produced by widget manufacturers specifically for publicity use. Some were legitimate claims with correct rights owner too, but not what I would describe as particularly creative.

I am sorry I have derailed this conversation off-topic, but copyright trolling is painful subject for everyone who likes to keep internet fun, open and creative.

UGC under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, but that may change as it is the subject of current legal disputes

In EU we have some insane laws also coming up in this area too: [wired.com...]

Needless to say, they will harm very large platforms the least and burden tiny microscopic ones like mine the most. Just like it is with most regulations that inadvertently help large monopolies entrench even further.

Article 13 pre-filtering requirements are also practically impossible to satisfy. It would mean I would have to check all user uploaded images against every single copyrighted image ever created globally, before publishing. Most are not added to copyright databases anyway, but that would not exempt me from liability and arbitrary astronomical "damages" per each image.

Thankfully this nonsense is not implemented on individual EU country level yet, as far as I know.

[ichthyous]

I am seeing enormous drops of ~60% in traffic to some of my most important category pages this week. Upon further inspection it's happening on the pages where Google has added one huge AI snippit result at top, then sometimes a huge image block, a People Also Ask and Things to Know block, and sponsored ads. Even though I am ranking #1-#3 the traffic is dropping off completely.

In one case, an article I wrote went to #1 and has been pulling in so much traffic that it passed my home page some days. Suddenly in the last day the traffic had dropped 81%! The reason being that my article is now being used for the AI snippit at top of results, and not just the first result. The link to my site is there, but apparently nobody clicks on it despite the huge top placement. Is this what others are seeing when their articles are being used for AI snippits at top?

Inexplicably, traffic to my homepage has been murdered for weeks, and is now -74% today. Is anyone else losing traffic to their home page like this? It would imply a penalty.

[EditorialGuy]

@ichthyous: Our home page is our top page in terms of traffic (and has been for a while now). I suspect that's because so many of our formerly top-ranked information pages have dropped in rankings over the last year and a half or so, not because our home page is receiving more love from Google.

In general, our site hasn't experienced much volatility lately (other than the occasional spike for an article that gets featured somewhere). It's almost as if Google had decided to put our little corner of the Web on hold.

[Conro]

For my niche in the top positions it is full of forums and youtube videos, it doesn't matter if the thread does not answer the question, the important thing is to take away the traffic to the sites crawled to train Google's AI, so they close and..." What copyright infringement? You cannot violate the copyright of a site that does not exist". Apart from this, how does google earn if sites with ads are penalized? If I were an advertiser I would ask myself some questions

[tom_010101]

Yesterday there was a 50% drop and today there are practically no visitors to my site. It's like being kicked out of the index. I can't explain it.

[Conro]

@tom_010101 Have you made any recent changes to the site? Submitted the sitemap or requested the crawl of the site?

[Billy85]

I also noticed a traffic drop yesterday (July 5th) especially towards the evening (Germany) and today is pretty sh*t so far

[Micha]

i agree, yesterday was a big drop in google traffic. now it's starting to rise again

[RedBar]

I can't explain it.

Completely noirmal drops for me Thursday at 50% and 75% Friday, my explanation is the US long holiday weekend.

YMMV!

[christianz]

Traffic is weak all week.

[EditorialGuy]

Yesterday, our pageviews were up 23 percent and UVs were up 16 percent. Our top pages were the usual batch (no unusual spikes).

I can't thank Google for the increase, though--yesterday's Google traffic was only 29 percent of the UV total, compared to 35 percent for the last 30 days.

[Samsam1978]

Worse I have ever seen totally outranked by an app and now all my aadsense revenue is 70% down. Both me and Google loosing allot of money. Crazy, and the app is terrible content, can't believe they would allow a page without ads outrank us. Not good for anyone - apart from the app of course so Apple are winning there.

[universenet]

Worse I have ever seen totally outranked by an app and now all my aadsense revenue is 70% down. Both me and Google loosing allot of money. Crazy, and the app is terrible content, can't believe they would allow a page without ads outrank us.

This is exactly what is good for google, that advertisers can not spend money
on adsense over publishers websites, so better for google is that they spending money
on google search only !
This is why google put how much is possible websites in top what have minimum or zero ads
Why google can do and other can not to do this?
Because google is monopolist on internet and price for ads on google search going in sky
Ideal cmbination for google is that publishers not exist on internet!
This can be ideal for google and with AI google will be very close to this status

[EditorialGuy]

This is exactly what is good for google, that advertisers can not spend money
on adsense over publishers websites, so better for google is that they spending money
on google search only !

How is that good for Google? Google has a huge display-ad business that depends on third-party content sites for revenue. (Not just AdSense, but also Google Ad Manager.)

[universenet]

How is that good for Google? Google has a huge display-ad business that depends on third-party content sites for revenue. (Not just AdSense, but also Google Ad Manager.)

Because money will be spent more on google search, it is simple, money can not be spent in sach engines what does not have enough traffic, so now google using that position of monopolist
Google if want can make all publishers on top on every search (it is 2millions publishers and they covering almost everyhing with their websites), why google does not do it?
Becuase pushing advertisers to spend on google search where is ads price more high
In that way google making price ads up and up, how long? We will see..
This is why is so many spams on google search in place where should not to be
Google very good know what are qualitiy websites, ok, maybe for new websites need some time but fol any website longer on market google very good know quality of that website but still all looking like a garbage, why?
Every new update looking worse and worse...why?
It is simple

[Conro]

@Samsam1978 You are losing money, not google. Google advertising works on trust whether you publish their banners in you site or spend money on advertising as an advertiser you have to trust what they tell you about the clicks made. You have no way of knowing if the clicks said by google are real. If it were an advertisement impossible for me to track, I would outlaw it

[EditorialGuy]

Because money will be spent more on google search

(1) Google's SERPs don't run branding (a.k.a. display) ads.

(2) Even if Google did run branding/display ads on its SERPs, advertisers wouldn't necessarily want to buy them. (Shopping and other direct-response ads are a good fit for SERPs, but ads that convey a branding message to specific demographic groups, etc. are not.)

(3) If Google were to intentionally write off display/branding ads (something that would be completely irrational), it would be leaving millions (billions?) of dollars on the table for a competitor to pick up.

Bottom line: It isn't in Google's own interests to destroy third-party content sites, which is why the craziness of Google's current SERPs is likely to be an aberration, not a long-term strategy.

[universenet]

(1) Google's SERPs don't run branding (a.k.a. display) ads.

Google just did run AI
and that AI will replace many need for publishers website and even legal way
so googlepreparing advertisers for this time when they will make
ads only on AI and on publishers websites less and less...
Why?
Because publishers websites will have less and less visitors,
less and less traffic
What kind of branding?
Who need branding?
All is simple, if you have less visits to your website you will earn less
and AI will help that your website and websites of all publishers will have less and less visits to their websites
but similar process will be with bing, yahoo...

[Micha]

I shouldn't have read through the posts tonight. These are really great prospects that I seem to have as a small publisher.

[ichthyous]

I am seeing the AI featured snippits being rolled back now...it appears that they are A/B testing with and without the snippits, or they are using them on a rolling basis. I am actually seeing traffic to my article that is used as the featured snippit reduced considerably. I just realized that you can opt out of featured snippits with the "no snippit" meta tag. Has anyone used this and did it increase traffic or lower it in the end?

[Martin Ice Web]

Absolute worse weekend even for the begining of holidays here in germany.
Sales from google traffic at 2%, sales from amazon again uprise by 53%.
I guess there has been a big shift in users with shopping intent towards amazon.

[ichthyous]

I took a look at my GSC analytics yesterday trying to analyze why such a huge drop in traffic to my home page. The reason is that Google is no longer selecting my home page as the URL for some high-volume searches, but instead has selected an interior page on my site with a lot less page rank. In other words, my interior page is competing against other websites' home pages and because of that I have dropped from top five rank to 30+.

I see Google doing this all the time now, and when it happens you often lose that traffic for months or years until Google somehow decides to switch the url back again. Is anyone else having this issue and is there any way to prompt Google to use the correct page for a search and not the one it has automatically selected? Is it a matter of two pages being too semantically similar? I have tried to update the home page by removing content that may water down the main terms semantically, but it hasn't worked.

[RedBar]

Fingers crossed however my global traffic appears to be back to normal today.

What I have seen as unusual is my UK hotel site. It's long-term average shows 94.8% UK traffic sources but 4th July showed uniques at -46% and page views -20% ... I'm still trying to rationalise that one since normal traffic did not reappear until the Saturday.

[ichthyous]

My USA traffic is off a cliff today...-43% at 2pm. My home page is -60%. Major content pages -50%-66%. Only USA traffic seems to be this low, every other region is higher. I do not understand how google is managing to suck the life out of some terms even if I am ranked #1. My ranking increased and the traffic is halved or more.

[Micha]

So my news site has been growing happily since Sunday, the traffic from Google is increasing. However, the store is still as good as dead.

[RedBar]

I do not understand how google is managing to suck the life out of some terms even if I am ranked #1.

The localisation for popular search terms?

Probably 99+% of my widgets I rank for in the top 3 in the USA but I haven't ranked that high for my top dozen or so widgets for 2-3 years now. I mostly see local sites or the major wholesalers / importers.

Is there a correlation between the AdSense highest paid-for widget keywords and G promoting local / USA sites as a consequence?

Why is it that I seem to rank so well for many terms yet not for others which I used to? It's not just me who see this, every non-USA supply company sees the same.

Do you rank fairly easily for many terms yet not for others?

HTH!

[ichthyous]

The localisation for popular search terms?

One would think, but when I check using different locations I'm still ranking at the top for the search...at least in various locations in the US

[Samsam1978]

@Conro - Sorry I can't understand what you mean. For the last six months pages advertising an APP have been outranking me on my article pages, this is a person who has employed an SEO agency and brags on LinkedIn lol, so it is just spammy tactics, she even had to cheek to email me to ask to purchase a link on my homepage! LOL! Thinking that she is all that, and massive unknown she will be gone soon. I just hope that this page gets dropped as they normally do these newish sites, but google keep them in for about 6-8 months and it is just so long then I return to number 1 for a bit and another new site outranks me for same period then drops into nothings. I don't know what this is all about. My website is 20 years old.

To confirm:

This APP has no Google advertising on it. I can't see how you think that Google is not losing money by placing this person's content advertising an APP in front of my content. My content has adsense. Surely, Google is losing money, by placing an app with no ads on top of the page people are not seeing Google ads. Just to give you an idea my income from adsense like halved. So how can that not hurt Google?

[mosxu]

For e-commerce sites the free shopping listings cause a lot of pain! 1. PLAs for us do not show at all. 2. The free listings are full of high street stores products!

[Martin Ice Web]

For e-commerce sites the free shopping listings cause a lot of pain! 1. PLAs for us do not show at all. 2. The free listings are full of high street stores products!

not only this but google decided to kill all traffic to brand items on e-comm sites.