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).

[Pjman]

"Now that the ranking bug is fixed"

I don't see any rebound on the 5 sites I track that were definitely affected by that bug. In my community, most people I know were affected are seeing the same thing.

Maybe, it requires a bit of time to get to all data centers?

[universenet]

[url]

https://searchengineland.com/

[/url]
Is search engine land public speaker of google?
I am just curious

[christianz]

So far it looks like August update has returned some ranking to some of the pages targeted by HCU. Since 99.9% of pages targeted were various types of spam, we can assume that relative ratio of value vs spam in Google SERP pages has decreased by that same amount. Is it really the unbearable whining of the SEOs on social media that pushed Google into doing something as dumb as this?

And why would Google listen to SEOs at all, since they do not provide value to either Google or Google's users - they actually do opposite - they manipulate low quality pages to try to give them more exposure than they deserve.

[Markedd]

My experience with the latest Google update. The traffic is slowly going up to the old website. Hmm, what's going on here? Oh, it's going back down. Yeah, that's more like it.

[brightstone]

@universenet
"we can see just few percent of internet"
I'm seeing the same thing. Like it's been erased.

[Micha]

I must honestly say that I have never seen such good figures on my news site as I do now. The traffic comes almost entirely via Discover, as articles from us are now constantly landing there. Sistrix also shows that we are gaining more and more visibility. So apparently I'm one of the winners of the update at the moment.

And then there's the store, which is also seeing more and more visitors, but unfortunately fewer and fewer orders.

[christianz]

For those hoping for HCU reversal, I can report that my secondary site that I created based on content in my primary site is rapidly regaining its rankings. It was hit by HCU and lost about 70% of its Google traffic, presumably because it was detected as ripoff of my main site. Which it kind of is. My original site is down moderately and today looks weaker still, but not catastrophic.

Maybe its time to "scale horizontally" again and create 10 low quality sites instead of developing one good site. The August update's version of "helping small publishers" I guess.

[delorean]

Most my keywords are gone again in serp. After a few daw of boost, now Google took it back. Is this happening only to me?

[Markedd]

@delorean No, I saw the same and I suspect most websites that saw any form of recovery are currently seeing some form of update reversing. I assume this was some weird PR move to get some hope into the website market. I don't know if it worked, although investors seem to be very spend-happy on weird projects lately.

[ichthyous]

I'm not seeing much of anything...the number of terms I was ranking at the top 10 for surged for a month. It went up daily without stopping. They since a few days before this update it reversed and even more rapidly dumped most (not) all of the increase. Now it seems to have stabilized. Traffic is higher overall, but some categories seem to be quite a bit lower every day despite ranking the same. My clicks and impressions at GSC both dropped from the time the update started and no recovery. Overall, not much of a difference.

I do wish some of you that rank well in Discovery would share your secrets...my articles don't show up in news or discovery at all. They make a blip on the day I post them and then vanish.

[Micha]

I do wish some of you that rank well in Discovery would share your secrets

I would really like to give you tips on discover, but I can't because I don't understand why my articles are suddenly drawing so much traffic from there. I haven't changed anything on the site or the type of articles, so it must be Google's update and the website's rating.

[jchiff]

Just wondering how much longer they can keep up appearances as the once-and-future 'most trusted' search, with bogus companies remaining at top of the heap.

"Impostor numbers pop up so persistently that I am once again begging you to be wary of Google or Google Maps listings for business phone numbers."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/08/20/google-search-scams-customer-service-phone-numbers/

[ichthyous]

Big drops in my most important categories again...home page is -60% and categories are -24 to -54%. Overall traffic is up slightly, but the most important categories are way down. Anyone else seeing a shift in where the traffic is hitting their site?

[delorean]

I'm so tired with Google. Made changes, still no improvement. I still vividly remember 2022-2023 when all my keywords are ranking.

[universenet]

Many years ago, when google was not a monopoly, google used these publishers to place ads.
and today, when Google monopoly is strong, publishers are no longer needed because it is enough to place an ads on google search ( and more profit)
and if google lost the top spot, it might reconsider making stronger connections with publishers.
In this way, we can calculate when google will restart normal search... not so fast

[RubicCubed]

I'm so tired with Google. Made changes, still no improvement.

If your page is high quality, and answers the user's query, then users won't hit the back button on their browser and search again which is precisely what Google wants users to do so they (Google) make more money. This is why Google's SERPS are dominated by ads, refinement boxes and low quality pages appearing in the organic results. Making changes, unless lowering page quality to increase the bounce rate, is unlikely to result in more Google traffic. Yes, that's the current state of Google IMO.

[EditorialGuy]

Many years ago, when google was not a monopoly, google used these publishers to place ads.
and today, when Google monopoly is strong, publishers are no longer needed because it is enough to place an ads on google search ( and more profit)

Your hypothesis might make sense if Google's SERPs were loaded with branding display ads, but that isn't the case. For Google, reduced traffic on third-party sites means money left on the table. (I suspect that the people who run Google Ad Manager and AdSense aren't too happy with Google's ongoing decline in revenues from third-party sites.)

[universenet]

@EditorialGuy
if you have enough visits for see your ads you do not need other platforms like publishers,
in start google had adsense but not enough visits that catch advertisers all arround, so google used publishers for catch people arround to see their ads units (and give best offer to publishers)
but when google have too much people who visiting their own google search no nee more publishers and even can make price much up because only google mostly delivery visits to publishers, things are very clear, things are not hypothesis , all are exact numbers, not any theory, everyhting is very clear, we have evidents, when you have evidents no need hypothesis, it is happening right now
Now google doing what want because everybody depends of traffic from google, so now is time for google to lose monopoly because is out of law

But if you see website like:
search engine land
search round table
They living like in other world
and they still talking abut some SERP,
for them is like it is notihng happening arround
( they are biased, not independent websites)

[EditorialGuy]

Again, Google's SERPs don't run the kind of branding display ads that one finds on third-party content sites (the kinds of sites that get their ads from AdSense, Google Ad Manager, Ezoic, Mediavine, Raptive, etc.) Instead, Google runs text ads, shopping ads, "sponsored" search results, etc. on its SERPs. That's why Google has a strong financial incentive for keeping third-party content sites from going out of business.

The challenge for Google Search is how to differentiate between legitimate "made for users" sites and superficial "made for search engines" sites (or, to use a popular term, "Made for AdSense" or MFA sites). That's probably why Google has been favoring corporate content farms lately. I see that as a stopgap measure, as opposed to a long-term editorial strategy. That doesn't make the stopgap any less painful for publishers whose sites aren't named "CNet" or "Forbes."

[universenet]

@Editorialguy

The challenge for Google Search is how to differentiate between legitimate "made for users" sites and superficial "made for search engines" sites (or, to use a popular term, "Made for AdSense" or MFA sites).

In the name of big challenge for google search google put reddit and quora and youtube videos in top of search?
And in the name of perfect google search and in same time cut 90 percent of internet
(google is killer of eco system of internet)
And in the name of perfect search google put 90 percent of ads in first page of search?
Is that what you thinking?
So, if google doing all that in the name of better search why some country
want send google in court?
They are very bad what they want to do with google
And why so many people on net, including reddit do not agree with google and google activity?
They are bad too, ah that world
Google is fighter for "better internet search"
and we, all of us do not understand him, we are not educated enough maybe

[NeapTide]

Spam on rise again.

Then I am seeing backlinks count increasing from just 1 website. And disavow links tool not working anymore. Google hasn't crawled disavowed links since 1+ year.
What are we supposed to do? Before this august update my website was getting increased traffic and now it has lost 50 percent traffic compared to what was gained.

How to get rid of these negative-seo links purposely made to look your website bad?

Why is google making everything complicated by abandoning important tools that helped webmasters in past?

[not2easy]

The disavow process was never intended to list unwanted backlinks, it was a way you could undo links you had created or bought and regretted. Think "Panda". You can ignore unwanted links that you did not create, probably the reason they discontinued the tool.

Google does get rid of nonsense links on their own. The "negative-seo links" are not made to harm your site's SEO, they are made to pretend their sites have value. I have never disavowed a link.

[edited by: not2easy at 12:18 pm (utc) on Aug 26, 2024]

[dolcevita]

On mobile google I see only the first 5-6 results instead of 10 as before. Below the results I see 3 blocks:
- People also search for then link More search results
- Apps with 3 apps and then More apps link
- Again People also search for with link More search result.

What I find bizarre is that there are 2 blocks of "People also search for" in the mobile results.
I think this is to the detriment of positions 6 to 10, which were replaced by "More people search for".

[gatormark]

@EditorialGuy

...or Reddit and Quora.

[NeapTide]

@dolceivta yeah if you are not logged into google on any browser, you are now shown 5 or 6 results and rest all are hidden now. That's the ultimate destruction of web right in front of our eyes. And among those 5 results you will find PAA, PASF, PAA and more PASF boxes.

Even on Play Store I am now observing same behavior in some categories. They will show 2 or 3 promoted apps then 10 apps (mix of newly launched and some old) and rest all good established apps hidden under large Display More button. This is to push developers to spend money on advertising or slowly rot away.

Pathetic. We are dealing with the biggest greedy bast***s of history. They are greedier than you could even imagine and doing all this to pacify their greed.

[ichthyous]

Big surge in traffic today...only US traffic not surging but it's early. This coincides with a reversal of the loss of top 3 and top 10 ranking terms...now I am starting to gain the ranking back again. This update doesn't know WTF it wants to do:

The United States
-17%
The United Kingdom
+191%
Australia
+169%
Germany
+252%
India
+57%
The United Arab Emirates
+73%
New Zealand
+236%
Canada
+1%
Brazil
+169%
Greece
+202%

[universenet]

Pathetic. We are dealing with the biggest greedy bast***s of history. They are greedier than you could even imagine and doing all this to pacify their greed.

@NeapTide

Do not be so bad about google, please
google love us,
google is fighter for better internet
for clean internet
(soon nothing will not exist, only google and derivates of google}
google is such amazing!
incredible google!

[Micha]

@universenet uh tell me, is everything okay with you, or do we have to worry about you after these words? ;-)

[universenet]

@universenet uh tell me, is everything okay with you, or do we have to worry about you after these words? ;-)

@Micha
time will show
For now I am ok
I love google so much, I am sure you love google too
I like how google eliminating competion
For now google is very good for this,
very brave

[christianz]

Do not be so bad about google, please
google love us,
google is fighter for better internet
for clean internet
(soon nothing will not exist, only google and derivates of google}
google is such amazing!
incredible google!

I agree with you. I love Google and I love how they are reintroducing old spam with the August update. Brave and beautiful.

Back to the subject. My large high quality site is losing ranks and traffic in orderly gradual fashion. For ~2 weeks, since the update started.

My secondary slightly spammy and a whole lot less "original" site is still gaining rankings but traffic gains have stalled.

[universenet]

my websites are visited more often with bing than Google
I did not change nothing so poeple using bing more and more?

[superclown2]

What I find bizarre is that there are 2 blocks of "People also search for" in the mobile results.

I remember seeing multiple ones a while ago in Chrome only. No sign of this, at the time, in FF or any other browser.

It came to light during the trial that earnings were down that month so the guys at Chrome were asked to help out by pushing organic SERPs even further down.

This is the type of company that we are up against.

[renatovieira]

After several days with signs of recovery, today a huge drop. Here we go again :-|

[ichthyous]

@renatovieira Same here...yesterday traffic was surging all day. Today my home page is -60% again. This update is odd, overall traffic is same or slightly higher but some parts of the website are dramatically reduced...namely the ones that convert the most. I haven't had a single new customer inquiry in six days now no matter how much traffic, so more of the same from Google

[Micha]

@renatovieira I agree, the same for me. After a few really good days, things are completely rubbish again today.

[gatormark]

One problem I see is that Google is throttling based on my lowest month's revenue of the year. For instance, my main site's revenue decreases during the summer because school is out. Then it starts to pick up mid August and will go strong through May. The site started to pick up at its usual time last week, but a few days later Google seemingly pulled back the traffic. It's weird. We'll see what happens come September 9. That's when it hits full stride.

[Martin Ice Web]

google:

Today we released the August 2024 core update. It continues our work to improve the quality of our search results by showing more content that people find genuinely useful and less content that feels like it was made just to perform well on Search.

With the best will in the world , i can´t see it....

google is full of "The 10 best " , "Ranking the best 10" .... all are leading to amazon. How difficult is it to demote websites just made for amazon ads?

[Micha]

That could be interesting: Yelp is starting to fight back and has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google in federal court in San Francisco.

[blog.yelp.com ]

[Fluff_Nutz]

At this point, who hasn't filed an antitrust claim against Google? Still its nice 'HA!' to see big sites and companies getting slammed just as much as the small ones. In reality none of this should be happening but here we are! Google continue to grow their problems, whilst everyone else has to suffer for their incompetence.

I'll admit traffic over here is incredibly slow. But its also growing, just slowly. Yesterday was a drop but we seem to be back today! Also noticed that the Reddit servers dropped, albeit briefly, once again.

[universenet]

That could be interesting: Yelp is starting to fight back and has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google in federal court in San Francisco.

Google may propose bankruptcy after all the prosecutions against him.
Everyone will want to get money from google, as much as possible.
Companies will ask for big damage from google

[delorean]

Two weeks after the August 2024 core update, still my rank in serp is unchanged. Google please bring back the good times (2022-mid 2023).

[gatormark]

Another weird and volatile day. Today is starting off 35% lower than the past few days. It's lost traffic from the USA where I live, target, and operate the websites. It's crazy how that happens. Traffic does well for a while and then there's the pullback.

[renatovieira]

Definitely the worst day of the year today. Let's see the rest of the day...

[Juniya]

Google brought this to themselves but to me, it's just interesting nonetheless. Human greed always and I mean always wins.

You would think Google with all the data they have access to would perhaps somehow be able to defeat greed and keep their original promise of not being evil or whatever BS they sold, but no, how can they? Shareholders want more and more money each year regardless of whatever but history has told us that eventually, the company will crumble as greed would overshadow everything else.

But here we are, 2024 and Google is literally falling apart the same way thousands if not millions of companies before them have fallen. Nothing lasts forever is the only fact in this world.

[gatormark]

If you have work in a corporate environment for years, you probably know that this is truth. Even when something is working well, people have to change it so that they are not seen as obsolete. People change what is working well so that they can keep their job and be seen as having some value.

[universenet]

If you have work in a corporate environment for years, you probably know that this is truth.

the same thing happened at Boeing,
now it's such a big problem and collapse.
"Smart" people coming and destroy everyhthing
I remind video when senator Josh ask some question to CEO of Boeing
[youtube.com ]

This is today "culture of business"
I am not sure if that CEO know anything about airplanes
He just fell down, maybe from Mars (or some tree)

[headspace]

So here is what I have observed over the last two years:-

Google now controls the earnings from all internet websites and places a monthly monetary value on those earnings
at the BEGINNING of each month, based on the 'perceived' helpful content of the site.
Their algorithms then work backwards using organic traffic to achieve those earnings irrespective of what you do on your own website.

For example if G decides that website A will earn circa £500 per month in revenue from organic traffic and no more.
Your organic traffic will then be manipulated to achieve that target. (This includes search, video and social)

This can result in huge swings in traffic across a month, but the earnings from your visitors will
change little. If you want to earn more money you will need to generate it from direct traffic, which involves
paid advertising of some description.

G's objective is to Limit and tightly control what they pay out from adsense each month compared to what they gain from adwords advertising
with predictability. Once you enter the G eco-system of search console and analytics et al, they know what your site can potentially earn and what it is costing them
in lost revenue.


Summary

Monetary earnings from organic traffic is no longer in the hands or control of website
publishers. G pre-determines how much your site will earn each month and then their algorithms will
work backwards to generate that level of traffic.

The days of being rewarded for good SEO, novel or interesting content is long past.
If you want to earn more, then you need to use G paid advertising of some description.
Once you enter the G eco-system of chrome, search console and analytics they know what your site is costing them,
and by costing them I mean lost paid advertising revenue.

[gatormark]

@headspace

If you want to earn more, then you need to use G paid advertising of some description.

I have always used paid advertising through Google, spending a few hundred dollars a month. I have thought about stopping that all together, but I am afraid that Google might penalize me even further for not using Google Ads.

They got me.

[headspace]

@gatormark
Yes, I used to do a lot of paid advertising with G in the days when it was affordable in the UK, but for most small businesses
today, adwords advertising will not yield a ROI, simply because you need to pay circa £1 - £2.50 per click just to get noticed.

It was my observation in the past that if I did some paid advertising it improved the rankings of my websites, but today
while my rankings may improve through paid advertising the overall revenue earned is tightly controlled by G.
I stopped paid advertising altogether about 4 years ago. I now only have adsense ads on my websites because the revenue generated
each month allows me to see G's behaviour.
If you manage to Increase your direct traffic significantly, you will see that G will squeeze your organic traffic to compensate, so that they reduce the adsense payout.
For G it is now all about predictability of earnings. So for them placing a monetary value on each website at the start of the month and then getting
the algorithms to work backwards to deliver that traffic makes sense.

[Markedd]

A few years back I would have called it a bug, but seeing the situation now, I wonder if the code behind Google is held by some intern in the basement. I published an article a few days back to go nicely with a video for the full user experience. And I checked today if by chance Google put it anywhere near the front page. And it did to my utter surprise, under Reddit, YouTube, Quora, of course. But what was strange was the date, it said July. I posted it in August, what's going on. I used the console to check the date and sure enough, the published date is August, I am not an idiot (another big surprise). But I did see an upload date for an element that happened in July. It was the YouTube video. Google took the published time of the video which was embedded in the article and stated that this is when the article was published. Excellent work, team.