August 2024 Google Search Observations

[christianz]

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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)

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

[Micha]

what has google done lately that has made sense?

[saladtosser]

>>>I view Google's affair with Reddit as a fling, not a long-term relationship. It just wouldn't make sense for Google to become an extension of Reddit while turning its back on the larger Web.<<<

I mean, they paid a lot money to scrap reddit data long term and they **know*** AI is killing the open web (they are doing it) so they need humans to be writing new content SOMEWHERE to harvest for the the future, else their AI will be mining other AI content from the open web that's left (they have your sites data already, don't worry). I suspect reddit will get another BIG bump to encourage more humans to move to reddit = more human rather than AI data to mine! To me it's just basic common or business sense and what I would do if I was a trillion dollar corporate monster that is never satiated no matter what the bank balance looks like...Sad, very sad but also blatantly obvious and probably their only advantage is reddit moving forward!

What I am REALLY confused about is, why does google have a social media PR team anymore, every post on every platform is completely slated by 100's of people which makes them look worse and worse, they would be better off firing the PR team completely and not posting anything at this point, this really confuses me......THAT makes zero sense to me any way I try to comprehend it..explanation, anyone? If you as a business hired someone to-do PR on social media and you saw the replies were even 30% negative would you continue to pay people to promote you? Cray cray! As my dear old nan used to say, god rest her, silence is golden!

[EditorialGuy]

To me it's just basic common or business sense and what I would do if I was a trillion dollar corporate monster that is never satiated no matter what the bank balance looks like

Let's not forget that advertising is where Google earns its money--not just ads on Google properties, but also on sites of every size across the Web. In 2023, for example, Google network revenues (defined as " revenue from ads displayed on websites and apps that are part of Google's ad network, beyond Google-owned properties") were more than $31.3 billion. That's not an insignificant sum.

[Fluff_Nutz]

The way I see it Google will continue to have negative feedback regardless. It's all over Reddit. Their reputation is forever tarnished at this point. They know this and likely don't care. However, they do still post news summaries and so decide to keep their PR. More and more people are waking up to the damage that G has done over the past few years. They are a terrible company with no idea what they are doing, constructively. As long as it brings in money. I mean I suspect articles being de-indexed is due to them being removed from the SERP and added to AI. But surely there is a better solution to this?

I, personally, do not mind them keeping to using Reddit because of the AI abuse among sites. Plus it, perhaps, brings in stability too. That is all site owners want and need. My worst fear is G owning Reddit in the future. They are a very selfish and poorly run company.

I looked at my traffic from 2023 and noticed that I used to get 400 views per day from G alone. It was more back in 2022 but I no longer have those figures. Now, in August 2024, I only get 30 views per day. They are also, almost, at rock bottom in terms of generating traffic compared to other sources. Glad I don't need to rely on them any more but my how far we have fallen.

In a way I'm glad it happened as relying on one source for traffic is never a good thing. Plus it woke people up to its dangers and now, thankfully, its finally being noticed by authorities. I see it as a positive, but albeit, nightmare awakening especially for those who have depended on it for so long. But alas it needed to happen. Nothing in the world should be run by one company.

[MayankParmar]

Long time, friends. I hope you're all doing well. :)

I just wanted to come here to wish everyone good luck with the core update. I hope we all see improvements and significant recoveries.

I'll be retiring if I don't see improvements after this core update. I'm exhausted and lack the energy to keep trying to make G happy.

So far, it's not looking good.

[ichthyous]

This one really shook the rankings up considerably. I shot back up to #1 for multiple terms, but also dropped to page two for others. I am seeing all kinds of new sites, some of them smaller independent sites. When you analyze them they don't seem to have much of a footprint so it makes no sense why they are even there. It is getting much harder to dominate multiple terms than it used to be...you really have to have a high domain authority for that.

[universenet]

how google working for now everyone can make search engine and searching only what
giving money and what like, no need search millions of website just few tousends or maybe few houndret tousnds and ok, this is what google doing now, no need resources for that,
few tousends strong servers are enough, no need millions of servers , allis cheap for google now,
but...
this is not searchengine,
this is friends engine?
or money engne?
or scammer engine?
how to call that thing?
ransom engine?
mafia engine?

[delorean]

too much shuffling. disaster on my end.

[morpheus83]

http[b][/b]s://searchengineland.com/google-august-2024-core-update-rolling-out-now-445221

"One of the aims of the Google August 2024 core update is to surface useful content from small and independent sites."

Lets hope for the best.

[Whitey]

FYI "Released the August 2024 core update. The rollout may take up to a month to complete " https://status.search.google.com/incidents/gVx6b2o78zke7GrMidGy

Another month of turbulence - jeepers.

Early days, but it'll be interesting to hear of anyone recovering from HCU.

[edited by: Whitey at 9:03 am (utc) on Aug 16, 2024]

[mosxu]

Algorithms are dangerously designed to offer enough dopamine to its slaves but how much are we losing every day? Let’s look back when apparently internet is still growing!

A former boss!

https://x.com/tsarnick/status/1823920847910002913

[superclown2]

I suspect reddit will get another BIG bump to encourage more humans to move to reddit = more human rather than AI data to mine!

You may well be right. However will this data improve Google's Artificial Ignorance system? Reddit members vary from the expert to the clueless so no doubt Bard2 will continue with it's usual level of 'accuracy' .

[superclown2]

One of the aims of the Google August 2024 core update is to surface useful content from small and independent sites

So far I'm seeing the opposite. High profile sites with lots of backlinks are dominating in the niches I am interested in, pushing down the smaller specialist sites that are packed with information. Maybe things will change; they usually do but not for the better.

Roll on the breakup.

[renatovieira]

There's an ongoing issue with ranking in Google Search that's affecting a large number of search results.

https://status.search.google.com/incidents/42XCLGtpuCZkzqe4dc6S

[Micha]

What's going on today? My news site can't save itself from readers at the moment. No matter what we publish, the articles are being overrun. I've never experienced anything like it (and it's staying constant, it's been like this all day and the site has already broken its visitor record from 2022).

[universenet]

Micha
Google just open for some moment normal internet (by mistake push on red button)

but do not worry, soon they will make it back and no more visits
Will stay google youtube and reddit only

[Micha]

@universenet I only saw your post after I had sent mine. Unfortunately you will be right, even though I fortunately don't have a problem with Reddit in Germany. It can't be that small websites get reasonable traffic from Google.

[delorean]

Still no recovery.

[MayankParmar]

Nothing here as well.

[renatovieira]

I see positive signs here. But it's too early to speculate anything, as the update will take a month.

[MayankParmar]

Looks like a lot of people who were previously hit by HCU and CU are seeing improvements, but I'm not. In my case, I'm typically affected within the first 6-12 hours after the update. All the updates in the past got me within 12 hours. So it seems like recovery isn't happening for me this time either. Womp womp.

[ichthyous]

There's an ongoing issue with ranking in Google Search that's affecting a large number of search results.

I am seeing huge shifts...My home page and most of my major content category pages have dropped up to 80% and only the lower level content pages are receiving traffic. The articles are receiving much more traffic than they used to, while the other parts of the site are blitzed.

What's going on today? My news site can't save itself from readers at the moment. No matter what we publish, the articles are being overrun.

I am seeing the same thing...the articles are receiving all the traffic, while the content category pages and the home page have dropped drastically.

[NeapTide]

Has anyone checked mobile serps? My websites get 95 percent traffic from mobile devices. So today while checking different keywords I have seen that often 5 results are displayed and a large "More Search Results" button appears.
For some other terms the number of organic results displayed ranged from 6 to 10.
Now even if your website has recovered but if it is 5+ below chances are it is hiding under "More Search Results" button thus killing your web traffic.

No wonder google just keeps finding new ways to destroy the web and webmasters.

Unfortunately I have observed same behavior with Bing too. So both these monsters are in same league.

PS. To observe this behavior, you need to test on web browser where you are not logged into your own Google account

[edited by: NeapTide at 3:19 pm (utc) on Aug 16, 2024]

[christianz]

Yesterday traffic was looking hopeful. Today it's bad.

[Dooku]

I have several email only hosting packages at Namecheap(besides many domains).
Yesterday I received an email offering a nice discount if I renew those email packages.......I have NEVER EVER seen that for existing customers at Namecheap in ALL the years I use them. (anyone else?)
This is NOT a coincidence, especially with all the news I hear from people letting their domains and hosting packages expire.
The writing is on the wall......

[RedBar]

as the update will take a month.

Is Google search powered by Win 11 since it's just as flaky, slow to update and incredibly frustrating?

[Soulofmonk]

I am not seeing any improvements for my 8-year-old site, which has been losing traffic since HCU. I must be one of the unlucky ones :(

[ichthyous]

Is Google search powered by Win 11 since it's just as flaky, slow to update and incredibly frustrating?

Why I would think it would take at least a month to test Google's latest small-business-crushing / profit-boosting algo changes on billions of guinea pigs around the world. ;)

Perhaps before all the Trump/Musk cult members floating around on here should take note that it's the Justice Department taking action and winning cases against Google, and which could potentially break it up. Trump and Musk are both vehemently against regulating the tech industry at this point. Trump and the GOP used to be for action against the tech monopolies, until Musk, Thiel, et all started to bribe them with massive campaign cash. This isn't directed at you Red, just the general readership here. It's good to know who your real allies are in this battle.

[not2easy]

Mod's note: We still do not discuss politics anywhere in this forum. Everyone is welcome to their opinion whether others agree or not, it just doesn't belong in here. See [url=https://www.webmasterworld.com/tos.htm] Terms of Service[/url]

[christianz]

I am not seeing any improvements for my 8-year-old site, which has been losing traffic since HCU. I must be one of the unlucky ones :(

I don't think there is any chance of expecting wholesale HCU recovery for everyone. That would mean total drowning in MFA AI sites. Basically the number one complaint regular Google users had before HCU - ending up in ad stuffed made-for-affiliate made-for-search crap sites that you have to scroll for ages and rear through worthless fluff just to get blasted with ads etc.

HCU was good at actually getting that crap eradicated from SERPs to some extent.

And that was before the widespread availability of LLM text generators. Imagine how many crap SEO sites there are now and how many would be spawned if Google rolled back HCU and actually gave SERP placements to these types of sites - there would instantly be 10-20 sites competing in the niche of "How to open a door" with increasingly elaborate illustrated articles on the art of door opening, etc.

[RedBar]

Why I would think it would take at least a month to test

Aha ... Do you think it takes a month to "test" their "improvements" or for their databases / equipment to catch-up with whatever?

Do they not do in-house testing before launching? Just how long and how many people have been working on this update that takes so long to roll-out?

I find it an utterly bizarre situation to deliver such questionable results.

[ichthyous]

Aha ... Do you think it takes a month to "test" their "improvements" or for their databases / equipment to catch-up with whatever?

Do they not do in-house testing before launching? Just how long and how many people have been working on this update that takes so long to roll-out?

I find it an utterly bizarre situation to deliver such questionable results.

My response to your post was tongue in cheek, that's why the ;) at the end. But considering how many users out there they may be running iterations in real time and then they collect the data for weeks or a month and analyze it. Perhaps we have all become a bit cynical and there might be some goals which align between googles profit and webmasters...ie weeding out bot generated and ai Gen content. Google's brand is becoming damaged now so perhaps there's a point where the reputational damage is costing them too. Just speculation there.

[RedBar]

My response to your post was tongue in cheek

Yep, yep, I realised that :-)

I just do not comprehend why / how it is that so many so-called "talented" staff can take so long to create a new update and then have to wait a whole month to evaluate whether or not it's done what they intended it to do ... or not?

[MayankParmar]

It's interesting how Google clubs "ranking issues", "AI Overviews expansion", new ad styles or other changes when it rolls out a core update, which takes longer than a month to "fully" roll out when pretty much all of us see changes in the first week itself.

Is this company now playing war games with publishers?

[universenet]

Is this company now playing war games with publishers?

They doing that all time
They want give fake hope to people
Like maybe now will be better... maybe now,.. ok last time was not... now maybe will be
All time google "cleaning" spamm, but exacly they producing spamm
Alltime they checking and checking, for normal people website what was checked one time no need check all time, but google "checking checking", exactly all is fake
And all time number of indexed pages of majority of website are in seach console but not in search live
Google killing internet, from update to update ,,, just killing interent
Google should be removed from that position
Now google doing core update for "small bussiness" website? Fake....
I always say about proof that with google something is very wrong and this is next:
If you have price for using google maps and over nite that price google put 100x more so something is very very strange with that company, even using google maps was free in past...
Somthing is deep wrong in google company
Google attacking publishers in daily base

[mosxu]

Guys,

No one is listening to us!

The algo is not listening it is on its way to singularity!

[Whitey]

https://status.search.google.com/incidents/42XCLGtpuCZkzqe4dc6S

Just a reminder that this bug has not yet been fixed and ranking results, (therefore traffic), are disrupted. Waiting a month on top of the March core update, plus this, makes me want to turn my attention elsewhere for a while to maintain peaceful sanity.

[oldog]

For the daily usual suspects ( grumpy old webmasters and google moaners) .....lol..just joking..
Have you ever checked if your websites have passed all tests in PageSpeed Insights ? Do you get that Green ...Passed ?
You continuously moaning that your websites got a slap since a year ago, BUT, you are not telling us what is your niche ? Who are your competitors ?
If you just posting your daily traffic variations coursing the evil which of the west without telling us your niche and your main competitors we the rest who doesn't face your problems can't give you an advise or some useful tips.

[morpheus83]

Anyone experiencing a drop since the update started? Our traffic has nosedived by 90%, although I am hoping it is because of the Search ranking issue.

[delorean]

Disaster. No HCU recovery.

[sk7411]

Our traffic is down . Everything was going good the day core update rolled out but since the following day it seems a disaster . Not sure if it is due to the ranking bug .

[MayankParmar]

Google has lied again. No recovery, nothing. Only owners who voiced their complaints on X and were featured by BBC, etc., have experienced improvements. How is this fair?

[universenet]

Just a reminder that this bug has not yet been fixed and ranking results, (therefore traffic), are disrupted. Waiting a month on top of the March core update, plus this, makes me want to turn my attention elsewhere for a while to maintain peaceful sanity.

Maybe some of google employers doing diversion in google search algo because they feel will lose job in google soon

[ichthyous]

In reality this update started a couple of days before they announced it, and all the customers went with it. Customer inquiries and traffic were just beginning to stabilize briefly for me, and now zero inquiries since this new update started.

On another note, now that the court has barred Google from paying Apple $27B a year to be the default search engine on Safari, perhaps that loss of revenue will force Apple to come up with its own search engine? OpenAI has announced one, but I doubt that anything OpenAI produces could compete with Google for a very long time. The majority of my mobile searches are coming from Apple devices so it could make a big difference to have that competition. Bing + Yahoo + DDG are still under 3% of the searches to my site.

[edited by: ichthyous at 1:55 pm (utc) on Aug 17, 2024]

[not2easy]

Safari allows options, you are not forced to use Google unless you want to. Of course you could add other SEs before they made it easier.

[Samsam1978]

Lost 40% traffic since 2021 on my old 15 year old website and I am published author with Google authorbox and runs adsense, all human content. Good news seeing 6% increase yesterday. Still lots of new sites with AI content ranking above me or ones with simple paragraph and no adsense. Hope they removed this rubbish AI new websites in this update. The wording is awful including the slang they are using. My rankings unchanged in SEMrush - outranked by new websites who went from 0- 1million users in a few months. Crazy. Google needs to stop this as it hurts real publishers who have degrees in English. Found over the last 3 years high ranking AI sites keep on ranking then just replaced by another AI content farm, can't be good for user. And don't even mention reddit, most of the posts in my niche are people not knowing what an earth they are saying - then I rank 2nd. Hope this update corrects all these flaws. Noticed they applied AI overviews again to my author account (I had AI overviews for last year before it was released to US). I have actually used it a few times but could do with making the AI overviews a little smaller or to the side like Microsoft - and giving the user a choice of if to see them in my niche. My site still fails core web vitals because I would rather have a lovely looking website and adsense don't help with the heavy code, lost allot of traffic when that came out but not in best interest of my user to change my UI.

[Markedd]

@christianz Google's so called solution to that was to kill all small websites and partially collapse the medium ones, while pushing the large websites up. Did that solve the then-AI issue? No, it calmed it for a few days, but the black hatters came back with vengeance. You need to understand that there are niches which are simply missing now, no info at all, Google doesn't want to index those website because the LLM has classified the website as bad for whatever reason. The issue is that now, there are even more AI websites than before. It's basically, large authority websites that use AI (CNET is a very good example) and then you have the less authority websites that use AI. When you can't build a long-term business, you go for the short term which requires automation.

[ichthyous]

How much of the traffic loss is from India? My Indian traffic is down by half...I suspect it has something to do with this quality update. No great loss, I get nothing but form spam from India and they rampantly infringe on my images. I would block all Indian traffic like I do with Bangladesh, Pakistan, Vietnam, Nigeria and China, but I don't think it's a great idea for such a large country with a rapidly growing economy (and a democracy). Has anyone here banned Indian visitors completely?

[makintocheplus]

French website, no recovery yet...

[EditorialGuy]

Why would anyone draw conclusions about a month-long update when it started only two days ago, and when its rollout has been marred by a publicly announced bug that has yet to be fixed?