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).

[delorean]

I regain some traffic, but still not seeing this as full recovery because it is still can't be compared with 2022-2023. Only partial recovery. The most annoying also is the gradual increase of "page is not indexed crawled - currently not indexed"

[universenet]

One of factor to see if anthing changed is watching if number of pages changed in google search
but seems notihng yet now for me

site:www.example.com

Google displaying on search just some part of indexed pages

[mhansen]

Seeing positive signs of an ongoing visibility recovery from an HCU affected site. It's gone from +/- 20k daily impressions to +/-100k impressions in the last 4 days and it appears to be continuing. Pre-HCU impressions were around 300k/mo.

https://imgur.com/a/xeAfW4k

Site info: USA, lead generation. Informational and unique tools, with expert guidance/advice on specific topics and free web-based tools that help the users come to an answer. Trademarked business and service name.

[RedBar]

Since the update my global site traffic is up overall but down in the USA, however I have also seen a sudden increase in 404s from Blogspot sites from 2007/08/09/10/11 mostly calling on images & urls which were all changed with my html5 move in 2014. Not just a few pages but upwards of 50+ for each 404 in the past few days.

[ichthyous]

seeing a traffic increase of +10% but sales dropped like a stone in water. All traffic is zombie traffic right now.

I'm also seeing the same. Traffic is OK, slowly recovering for some categories that were hit, but in reality the inquiries are all ridiculous again going back to about two days before this latest update was announced. Now I'm getting inquiries from people trying to sell me things that I sell myself, nonsensical inquiries that I delete, and spam. The real customers vanished once again after a very short comeback earlier this month. So far this year is a total Wipeout in terms of sales...the worst going back to 2009, not including 2020 which was a pandemic.

[Lapizuli]

Anyone seeing that Google is ignoring the site: operator in search as of today? For the first time - ever? - I'm encountering it taking the site: operator as a suggestion rather than a restriction.

[morpheus83]

An interesting post on Searchengineland correlating GSC 'Crawled not Indexed error' with HCU -
https://searchengineland.com/fix-crawled-currently-not-indexed-error-google-search-console-445344

[universenet]

@morpheus83
All that is fake (nothing interesting)
Google just does not want crawler
We can see just few percent of internet because Google is focused only on websites what pay to him and even that google doing very bad

[mosxu]

temu.com ships 3 million items a day tax free in the US

Most of the items are free when downloading the temu app why? To exclude google ads !

Whatever updates they do is because buyer traffic is disappearing!

[engine]

Now that the ranking bug is fixed, i'm wondering if we'll see any more wild fluctuations. Individual sites, perhaps, but i'm referring to generally.

With my regular research i'm finding it more difficult to get at certain expected results. I'm hoping for normality when this current exercise completes in a few weeks.

[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