August 2024 Google Search Observations

[christianz]

---

System: The following 2 messages were cut out of thread at: [url=https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/5108712.htm]https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/5108712.htm[/url] by engine - 3:31 pm on Aug 1, 2024 (utc 0)

---

Traffic drop since yesterday / today. Not sure who is gaining right now - SEO spam or Googlespam (SGE etc).

[EditorialGuy]

Do I remember having to pay to get a Yahoo! listing? Or was it another SE?

Yes, you had to pay for a Yahoo! directory listing, although there may have been some exceptions. The fee was substantial, as I recall.

Yahoo! Search, the SE part of Yahoo!, didn't have a fee. (Its results were imported from Google after Google came along. I'm not sure what Yahoo! did for crawled search, or if it even had crawled search, pre-Google.)

Paid search (as opposed to paid directories) included AskJeeves and GoTo (later Overture). I think there may have another search engine, whose name I've forgotten, that interspersed paid results with organic results. The search landscape was big and messy back in the olden days!

[Hollywood]

I have been here on this website for a very long time (20 years), I am sure some won't believe this idea I have, but I am absolutely sure that Google knows each website owner and is filtering results to send pro Trump business less business.
Have you noticed a decrease in website traffic or search visibility for your business lately? It's due to Google filtering results based on political affiliations.

As a long-time user of Google My Business, webmaster tools, GSC, etc... and all else Google, I have observed a trend where businesses like me who are pro-Trump are receiving less online visibility and income. This includes fewer hits, less website traffic, and lower rankings on search results and maps. Truly ask yourself... IMO Google IS purposely filtering out business websites associated with pro-Trump business owners.

If you also strongly believe that your business is being affected by this bias like me, it's important to monitor your online presence closely and consider reaching out to your senators and congresspeople for your disclosure of what you are finding and thinking! Remember, maintaining a fair and unbiased online presence is crucial for the success of ANY business and ANY country.

~Hollywood

[Micha]

@hollywood and how do you explain the game to the rest of the world? Fortunately, we in Germany have nothing to do with the megalomaniac grandpa and he is (also fortunately) not an topic on my site.

So, now to the state of my pages: It's strange at the moment, traffic on my news page has been low all day, but from about 7pm it skyrockets, and has been doing so for three days. I don't need to pay attention to the keyword ranking at the moment, it changes several times a day.

Until yesterday the store was doing pretty well, but today the traffic is high, but sales are once again zero.

[EditorialGuy]

If we're to give credence to Hollywood's conspiracy theory (or is it meant to be satire?), Google must have slipped my file card into the Deplorables drawer by mistake.

[Hollywood]

I probably won't have more to say for a few years. One day Google will be replaced, I will be on that thread, on that free, non-biased technology.

[KaseyM]

Google isn't that smart.

The current algo states that if you're an Indian newspaper or Reddit you get top ranks. Everyone else fighting for scraps.

[ichthyous]

As a long-time user of Google My Business, webmaster tools, GSC, etc... and all else Google, I have observed a trend where businesses like me who are pro-Trump are receiving less online visibility and income. This includes fewer hits, less website traffic, and lower rankings on search results and maps.

Based on what proof are you basing this belief? What hard numbers, metrics? And why mix your political beliefs with your business at all? It's a recipe to lose customers, trust me. I'm considered a leftie by American standards (or a centrist by any other country's standards)...I have always had plenty of GOP/conservative customers. Do I want to turn away their business because of their political beliefs? F-no I take their money too! Don't mix business and politics, it's a recipe for losing money.

[Billy85]

@Kasey
I feel like the Algo is getting worse and therefore dumber.
I think they lost control on how to rank the best pages due to the complexity of the Algo and on top of that, they do everything to maximize profits aka saving money.
I just learned yesterday, that Google have trouble processing the current hreflang logic (whether on purpose or not) and that's why the SERPS are often littered with these trash results from India or that's why my site is getting outranked by sites from outside Europe that are pretty much irrelevant for Germany.

This update only seems to be a continuation of their current trash path, as I lost rankings yet again.

[Conro]

Does anyone have Google stock? Sell before they're worth nothing

[sanjeevk89]

Seeing a drop in some of my websites in Australia. Keywords have been fluctuating for the last two weeks.

[RedBar]

I've been Ozziebombed today!

I was hit for a couple of hundred pages by an Oz uni evening Oz time and then over the next 5-6 hours thousands of pages viewed in big chunks, some downloaded images, most did not.

It's certainly made my stats look strange today.

[renatovieira]

Today is very strange. I don't know if it's some analytics glitch or signs of the big update...

[mosxu]

The problem with digital and no regulation is that if you have a business online no one knows if your website is visited by a human or a zombie!

If it is physical business than is clear but the online made the physical useless and the online is also useless because of zombies anyway!

So antitrust rule has to make sure zombies are gone for good and hopefully some of us will still be in business!

[ichthyous]

Does anyone have Google stock? Sell before they're worth nothing

Google dropped like all the other tech stocks recently, and is rising again along with them. The market isn't punishing Google in any way...only if earnings decline. Amazon stock has dropped more than Google stock, and Meta has risen the most recently...go figure.

I do hope OpenAI rolls out a decent search competitor but you have to be careful what you wish for, there's nothing that would lead me to believe that OpenAI will be any better than Google, and Perplexity is already in hot water for scraping content and data theft.

[saladtosser]

In my mind we need a big SE that isn't from a company floated on the stock market and I think that can only come from Musk at this point, I keep seeing on X hes working on it?!

[l1fejosh]

@conro - yeah I have some holdings in Google. Still gonna keep my position tho

[ichthyous]

In my mind we need a big SE that isn't from a company floated on the stock market and I think that can only come from Musk at this point, I keep seeing on X hes working on it?!

Sorry but you have me laughing out loud. As if Elon Musk would create anything more egalitarian...Twitter has been burned to the ground and is a trash can of right wing conspiracy theories, bot profiles, #*$!, and general lunacy now. Anyone serious left long ago and the the advertising dollars followed. Why would he do better with a search engine?

[Hollywood]

@ichthyous [laughing hard, whole street can hear me] Elon might surprise you, glad you hate him, shows your colors. I'm in my latibule, my favorite place, reading this dialogue from your such and such side (left side).

If Elon does the search, Google is DONE IMO. It's needed, freedom that is, not lunacy... stupidity... psychosis :0)

[Micha]

@hollywood Do you mean the Elon whose AI is happily spreading fake news? Or the Elon who bought X and more than halved the value of the platform (who talks about freedom of speech and is now suing companies that don't want to advertise there)? Or the Elon who has been talking about the Hyperloop for years but still hasn't built a single working loop because there are too many unresolved issues? Oh yes, and then there's that Elon guy who wants to conquer Mars and is constantly launching rockets into space, most of which explode. I think there was also this Elon who, together with Tesla, announced humanoid robots that are nothing more than better vacuum cleaners, not to mention the Cybertruck. So which Elon are you referring to exactly?

Seriously: Google is already a disaster, we don't need another search engine that will most likely deliver even worse results.

[Hollywood]

Here are just a few of the lawsuits Google has lost or settled in the past three years:

1. Google's Antitrust Case in the European Union (2023)
Details: The European Union's General Court upheld a €2.42 billion ($2.7 billion) fine imposed on Google for favoring its own comparison shopping service over competitors.
Outcome: Google lost the appeal, and the fine was upheld, reinforcing the EU's stance on anti-competitive practices.
2. Google vs. Sonos Patent Infringement (2022)
Details: Sonos sued Google for patent infringement related to wireless audio technology. The case resulted in a ruling that Google infringed on five Sonos patents.
Outcome: Google was ordered to stop importing products that violated the patents into the U.S., leading to product changes.
3. Google Location Tracking Settlement (2022)
Details: Google agreed to pay $391.5 million to settle claims brought by 40 U.S. states that it misled users about its location tracking practices.
Outcome: This settlement is one of the largest privacy settlements in U.S. history, and Google was required to improve transparency about its location tracking.
4. Google Play Store Antitrust Settlement (2022)
Details: Google agreed to a $90 million settlement to resolve a lawsuit with U.S. app developers who accused the company of monopolizing the distribution of apps via the Google Play Store.
Outcome: The settlement included a payout to developers and changes to its policies to provide more flexibility in using other payment methods.
5. Google Privacy Case Settlement in Arizona (2022)
Details: Google agreed to a $85 million settlement with the state of Arizona over claims that it illegally tracked users' location without their consent.
Outcome: This was part of a broader scrutiny of Google's privacy practices, leading to settlements and changes in how the company handles user data.
6. Google vs. Epic Games Antitrust Case (Ongoing)
Details: Although not fully resolved, Google has faced significant legal challenges from Epic Games, which accused Google of anti-competitive practices regarding the Google Play Store. This case mirrors Epic's lawsuit against Apple.
Outcome: Google has faced legal battles and ongoing scrutiny but has not yet lost or settled this specific case.
These cases highlight ongoing legal challenges Google has faced, particularly in antitrust and privacy domains.

The last one, Google lost just last week, was one of the largest settlements in technology history!

Have fun you up there ^^ the psychosis continues even here on WebmasterWorld lol. Let's go Brandon!

[ichthyous]

The last one, Google lost just last week, was one of the largest settlements in technology history!

And yet the stock price went up. Nobody seems worried in the slightest. None of us here are defending Google's obvious monopoly...but stating how many suits Google has lost does not in any way make a case for why Elon Musk could build something better. We already have an example of what he has built...he took a company that millions used and halved the value in a short time. Now nobody credible is left on Twitter. Even the name X is stupid. Tesla is also slowing spiraling downward. Don't get me wrong, I think the man is a genius in some ways, but like most men of his wealth he has a boundless ego and he only cares about what benefits himself, the rest is window dressing to that end.

[jclu]

If you are sure that it does not generate any traffic or anything good for you, then go ahead and remove it.

Remember to also remove it from Search Console, since if someone somehow enters that URL they will have a bad experience.

Also remove the links that point to those pages to avoid giving your users a bad experience.

[Hollywood]

Google is down from its top at 193.31 (now 163.84)
@ichthyous too much time on your hands, go buy some bitcoin and Tesla
Tesla outperformed Google in a big way, figures below.

Percentage Returns Over past 8 Years:
Tesla: 1192.04%
Google (Alphabet Inc.): 319.67%

Conclusion:
Tesla's stock price increased by approximately, 1192.04% over the 8-year period, significantly outperforming Google, which saw an increase of about 319.67%. Therefore, in terms of stock price performance, Tesla performed much better than Google during this period. :)

[edited by: Hollywood at 1:05 am (utc) on Aug 9, 2024]

[delorean]

Hi guys. Does anyone here still use disavow?

[Micha]

Hollywood: You're just painting a better picture of the world and comparing apples to oranges. An IT company is different from a car manufacturer. Besides, Musk is also facing a lot of lawsuits and is considered an inhumane employer.

How about we just wait and see what happens? If he builds a search engine (or has one built), we will hear about it at some point and maybe it will actually come to market at some point. Until then, Musk is irrelevant to website operators. (And I would be very grateful if Trump didn't play a role here either).

Let's focus on the current situation, for example that Google is currently changing something in the background and traffic is fluctuating extremely.

@delorean no longer, to be honest. I used it to devalue links from spam sites, but there were so many of them that I gave up and removed it months ago. That didn't change anything.

[delorean]

@Micha so you mean, you deleted your disavow file and there are no changes? So it is safe to delete it?

[Micha]

@delorean I can only tell you what happened to my side. It may have other effects. You can try it out, download your file, delete it and see what happens. (But wait a few weeks) and if it's not so good, upload it again.

[Martin Ice Web]

i am with micha. Disavow isnīt helping or hurting your website. It is the same stupid statement from google like make compelling websites. You just feed googles algo with your free work and your data.
If you run a search eingine this big and you ainīt getting it right what is a spam link or not then you should probably look for another vertical your doing your business in.

Today google is in full zombie mode. Seems to be normal for wednesdays and fridays.

[sanjeevk89]

You can add noindex and nofollow tag to these pages and then delete them. You can also add redirect to the deleted pages to related category or section of the website.

[ichthyous]

Google is down from its top at 193.31 (now 163.84)
@ichthyous too much time on your hands, go buy some bitcoin and Tesla

You buy bitcoin and Tesla, I want no part of either. Tesla has completely collapsed in price several times now and it isn't coming back again with all the competition from Chinese and American EV now. It was rich liberals who were buying up overpriced Teslas, and Elon has ensured that they all hate him now. Not one liberal will ever buy again, so let the MAGA supporters Elon loves so much buy them now. Tesla was great early on, but those days are long gone.

GOOG 8 year price increase is ~1500%...you're forgetting the stock splits since then.
TESLA 8 year price increase is ~800%...still pretty good but it peaked in 2021 and has gone down ever since. You go ahead and buy a stock that has gone down for three years running, not me.

Again, everyone here welcomes competition in search. But don't think Musk wouldn't be just as bad as Google...he's currently trying to sue advertisers for NOT wanting to place ads on X...yeah, that's a winning strategy to increase earnings!

[edited by: ichthyous at 1:08 pm (utc) on Aug 9, 2024]

[Billy85]

The current traffic is like a slow drip of nothing.

And a lot of shuffling going on. The results are for some of the product queries in my niche not geospecific at all and all over the place. When I search from Germany, I don't want to get results from the U.S., Canada or outside Europe at the top.
The results should be German results first, then European results and then the rest of the world. This has been always the case up until sometime last year.

[Micha]

@Billy85 I agree with you that the English results for a search from Germany are extremely annoying, especially for topics that affect Germany. I even get English websites presented to me when I search for something related to my income tax return. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find something with Google. Unfortunately, Bing and thus DuckDuckGo are getting worse and worse.

[mhansen]

For anyone following the latest Antitrust case - this post from Jason Kint is very insightful to the depth of what Google is doing.

If you wonder where all the web traffic has gone - it's to their O&O properties. (Owned and Operated)

https://x.com/jason_kint/status/1821554841786683554

[christianz]

If you wonder where all the web traffic has gone - it's to their O&O properties. (Owned and Operated)

BINGO. I have been saying this for years - Google has been prioritizing their own web properties to absurd, criminal degree. For example, the amount of SERP real estate that YouTube gets is beyond crazy. And no - it's not "what the user wants". Nobody wants to see YouTube in Google search, unless they are doing specific searches with specific video or channel in mind (branded searches).

[Hollywood]

Below is the results of two major corporations. One, Google has lost numerous lawsuits recently, in general for invasion of privacy, monopolistic tendencies, antitrust and privacy. Let the best man win, respect to Tesla and Elon.

Google is down from its top at 193.31 (now 163.84)
@ichthyous too much time on your hands, go buy some bitcoin and Tesla
Tesla outperformed Google in a big way, figures below.

Percentage Returns Over past 8 Years:
Tesla: 1192.04%
Google (Alphabet Inc.): 319.67%

Conclusion:
Tesla's stock price increased by approximately, 1192.04% over the 8-year period, significantly outperforming Google, which saw an increase of about 319.67%. Therefore, in terms of stock price performance, Tesla performed much better than Google during this period. :)

[Billy85]

Even though it's Offtopic:
I don't believe electric cars have a future. They are simply not practical, there are too many issues and they certainly won't save the planet/environment.

And instead of investing your hard earned money into stocks where you have little or no influence, it's way better to invest into physical things, a business or something like that. A friend invested a couple ten thousands into stocks and lost at least 30k Euros in the past 2-3 years (approx. 10k in the past days)

[Conro]

@Billy85 The electric car is like artificial intelligence, an idea to pluck investor chickens. They already make us put problems if we turn on the air conditioner, let alone if we all had an electric car

[Billy85]

@Conro
Exactly. Unless some of the major AI issues will get fixed, they won't be more than "smart" Algorithms or Large Language Models

[NeapTide]

AI is nothing compared to human intelligence. AI is more like a content spinner (just look at Google AI overviews picking lines from websites and changing few words and presenting as something scholarly)

Personally when AI overview shows up, i double check by going down the serps to make sure info I am getting is correct. In my personal experience, AI overview often provided wrong, incomplete or irrelevent information so I have now made it a habit to double check everything.

[Conro]

@NeapTide They don't even know how to do a damn spinner these guys from Google. Perplexity also has the exact same problem, it cites the sources but the things written in the answer are not present in the sites. Zero reliability and yet there are those who use this stuff and take everything they read for granted.

[Samsam1978]

This is the worse my rankings have ever been. AI sites popping up taking over my rankings less than year old. Not sure how long I can survive. Google end up banning these sites in 6 months to 12 months only to replace with another one. It's really effecting my site.

[christianz]

The fact that these AI sites rank at all is shocking. This August update seems to have weakened Googles defenses against such SEO content. It's not dramatic yet. Maybe some 10% more crappy SEO sites ranking.

Let's see if it gets worse. Spammers are certainly pumping out more "niche sites" than ever before and large publishers with no moral compass are milking their reputation more than ever before, because there is still no penalty for that.

[ichthyous]

Traffic is surging this weekend, everywhere except for the USA, which is only up +1%:

The United States
+1%
The United Kingdom
+58%
Australia
+206%
India
+53%
Canada
+72%
The United Arab Emirates
+53%
Brazil
+511%
Ireland
+358%
Israel
+129%
Germany
+53%

Google seems only to care about monetizing USA traffic unimpeded, perhaps because the company knows there is nobody to stop it. This traffic has resulted in real inquiries, so not bots. Hopefully it will keep up!

[Samsam1978]

Why don't they just BAN all new websites or slowly test them with a few pages here and there and build up over a number of years. AI websites are out of control. I see one in my niche that started in April 2024 now gets nearly 1 million unique in 4 months. Its crazy. They don't have adsense either as selling an app but even so.

It is crazy. It is an easy fix, promote old niche websites.

[Samsam1978]

Also notice how quite this forum is. People are giving up.

[Conro]

It is precisely the older sites that are penalized if they are not well known, the others I have no idea how they could recover. As far as I'm concerned, I've updated and rewritten hundreds and hundreds of articles, but it has only made it worse. In fact, with the new update, if it doesn't improve, I don't waste any more time. Google can keep the spam sites and forums with threads from 10 years ago.
I'm looking at the serp from mobile now and I see:
1 paa
2 3 youtube videos
3 search correlate
4 forum
5 same forum
6 site organic
7 search correlate
And... More search results (next pages)

Getting worse and worse

[RedBar]

Also notice how quite this forum is. People are giving up.

Quite simply how many independent webmasters / SEOers are there these days v employees told what and how to do something?

How many mom and pop sites are SEO'd well, how many m&p sites rely solely on their FB rankings? I know loads do in the UK.

How many well-constructed however poorly SEO'd sites are there that the owners have given-up on since they do not rank organically and their only solution is G Ads that they cannot afford?

I was talking to someone recently who worked for our regional council leisure department about websites and they proudly said that they had just been given a GBP 30K "allowance" to create a new site for a specific leisure project.

This person knew zero about design and SEO yet was "in charge" of this project plus she was also being paid GBP 50+K p.a. plus all other benefits ... I had to leave the room, uneffingbelievable!

[Micha]

This person knew zero about design and SEO yet was "in charge" of this project plus she was also being paid GBP 50+K p.a. plus all other benefits ... I had to leave the room, uneffingbelievable!

And I thought only in Germany people are so crazy...

The fact that there is so little activity in the forum could also be because people keep coming along and saying that complaining is pointless, or that they don't want to read it. That also puts people off, and many probably just don't want to keep talking about it and reading about how annoying the current situation is. Nothing changes anyway.

[christianz]

To be honest, search wouldn't be half as bad if 100% of the results were forums only. But not the big corporate forums like reddit, quora etc that are like digital concentration camps / plantations. Only small ones. And preferably not ones who were bought up by few large website holding companies and stuffed with ads to the max to be soulless passive income machines.

Instead a bunch of forums still owned and operated and developed by real subject-matter enthusiasts. That would be a flashback to glory days of the web.

Btw, I don't own any forums, just speaking as web search user who is sick of SEO content.

[Conro]

Many forums have been closed because of the GDPR and because people prefer to write on Facebook groups and pages