September 2024 Google Search Observations

[RubicCubed]

Here it is September 1st and Google's degradation of search continues. For an info search I see one large Youtube video at the top directly followed by a People Also Ask box. Scroll down, and there is the first organic result followed by a video box then two organic results with Reddit being one of them. What follows this is a forums and discussion box. The forums and discussion box has Reddit at the top with a one year old thread, then a different forum with a four year old thread and finally a different forum with an eighteen year old thread. There is absolutely nothing useful for this search for the average user. With results like this, I'm not surprised to see other search engines sending us more traffic and they slowly are.

[edited by: not2easy at 11:10 am (utc) on Sep 2, 2024]
[edit reason] New month, new thread [/edit]

[superclown2]

I've been believing for a long while that as soon as Google's monopoly was seriously threatened they would go all out to make as much money as possible regardless of any possible damage it could do. I hoped that I would be proved wrong.

Unfortunately my suspicions seem to have been correct. Fewer organic results on the first page, multiple PAA and PASVs, blocks of advert filled Youtube videos, Reddit everywhere, individual ads taking up more than a full swipe of my six inch mobile phone screen, all point to a company that it is confident that it has no real competition.

The case for making search a heavily regulated utility has never been clearer.

[Micha]

September began with a massive slump in sales in the webshop. Since yesterday 0 Euro turnover, despite many visitors sent by Google. Well, at least the number of visitors to my news page continues to rise.

And on the subject of search results: In Germany you can no longer use Google search, only crap, videos and advertising. We don't have the problem with Reddit, but there only seem to be two news sites left here.

[christianz]

I am using Duck as my default search engine because of relative privacy and lack of Googlespam. However, I sometimes switch to Google if I want something "deeper" and something more "real" (like conversations / help / advice on specific long tail topics written by real humans with no conflict of interest). This August update is threatening to turn Google ranking into Duck ranking where bunch of spun / regurgitated SEO content with thousands of empty words ranks in relatively high positions.

Nobody wants that stuff, not users, not Google themselves. HCU was partially successful in cleansing that kind of fake content. It was unsuccessful because it penalized bunch of good sites as collateral damage. I get that. But in getting the baby back in the bath they are also sucking up gallons of dirty bath water. And there is a lot more of it than 5 months ago, thanks to gen AI.

[oldog]

@Cristianz….Duck …like Duffy Duck ? lol

[Dooku]

I've been believing for a long while that as soon as Google's monopoly was seriously threatened

Nothing will change unless THIS is stopped:
[youtube.com...]

The control is much larger and worse than 99% of people are aware of (even webmasters "in the know").
It's 40 minutes, but really worth watching if you want to know why your earnings are sucked away by monopolies.

[christianz]

@Cristianz….Duck …like Duffy Duck ? lol

Correct. Duffy Duck is better than G for quick targeted / branded searches where you already know what website you want to visit. But as far as ranking - it is probably worse than Google because it allows more spam.

[universenet]

Duck Duck Go is derivat of Microsoft

[not2easy]

Duck Duck Go is derivat of Microsoft

Does Microsoft know this? Can you share where you found this news, please?

[universenet]

Does Microsoft know this? Can you share where you found this news, please?

When msn search was down, duck duck go was down too
it is enough proof, but ok, all on net you have about

[reddit.com ]

[duckduckgo.com ]

[edited by: universenet at 6:20 pm (utc) on Sep 2, 2024]

[Micha]

Could it be that Google is having indexing issues again? I just looked up some products I created yesterday and none of them are being found. After 24 hours they should actually be in the index, right?

[universenet]

[openwebsearch.eu ]

status of project:
[openwebsearch.eu ]

They crawled 2.23 Billion URLs for now
For any project like this need strong servers
and it is process...


This kind of project can be future of internet search
I hope will be more of them, in EU,,USA, and everywhere

[Mark_A]

Slightly off topic, but does anyone here optimise for Google AND Bing? And what differences are there in SEO-ing for each?

[delorean]

Some keywords are back, but still traffic is down. Google is hopeless.

[Martin Ice Web]

Slightly off topic, but does anyone here optimise for Google AND Bing?

Not off topic. Nice to see this kiond of question.
And, no, we don´t optimise for SEs anymore. Last year we started to ignore all of googles suggestions and just optimize for customers. Since now, your site was doing quiet well, allthough we got hit with every update the site came back even stronger after a few weeks.
So tiny changes can make a huge differenz in user interacting with your site. Let someone off-topic look at your site. Don´t give to much for google sitespeed evaluation.


Todays traffic is as low a brick.

[Mark_A]

@Martin Ice Web thanks. I agree making websites better for customers is vital.

We also have to be found when one of our customers needs us. It isn't possible for us to reach out to every prospect on the off chance that that day they realised that they need us. Instead, when they do realise they need us, we need to be easily findable.

For a long time that implied optimising for Google, but now I think the balance is changing, Bing is becoming more and more interesting.

[renatovieira]

Very slow today. Has anyone else noticed?

[Dooku]

we don´t optimise for SEs anymore

Obviously all the meta tags need to be there and used correctly....it makes a difference.
However, I now only optimize for user interaction. I use a heatmap session replayer service on each website, especially NEW ones.

Over the years I have found that only very FEW webdesigners actually understand GUI logic really well besides designing a website.
So you really need to use a heatmap service. In the beginning that will be a REAL eye opener.
Whatever YOU think is a good design or a logical construction of a web page, especially in e-commerce.....just throw that out of the window!

The ONLY people that are CORRECT are the visitors, no matter how weird you think they navigate.
So check the heatmap, how visitors navigate from one location to the next, where do they click, are there any "rage clicks", what do they expect...etc...etc..
Then start adjusting design features and navigation on your website step by step......and see the magic happen.

[Martin Ice Web]

@Dooku,

i fully agree with you.

Obviously all the meta tags need to be there and used correctly....it makes a difference.

I´ll put this under making a working website, not SEO.

[Micha]

It's great to see the attitude of only paying attention to the basic SEO stuff catching on. Why do more? Either way, you're at Google's mercy.

[Micha]

Well that's it, the update is finished according to Google

https://x.com/googlesearchc/status/1831046515374330114

[ChrisWilson]

Traffic dead today for me.

[christianz]

Hopefully they understood they made a mistake (too much spam) and aborted the whole thing. Although I don't count on it.

They reinstated that air humidifier and retro game site and that was really the main goal of this "core update" anyway.

[EditorialGuy]

RustyBrick is reporting that Google's August Core Update is done.

[searchengineland.com...]

[universenet]

RustyBrick is reporting that Google's August Core Update is done.

Now everyone with small businesses websites can finally live better and make a lot of money,
thank you, google, thank you
you are my HERO.
ONLY my hero

[NickMNS]

This has been the strangest update. Last September my impressions dropped by 50% overnight, but clicks from search continued their gradual upward trend into December. Then impressions and clicks began to decay, dropping by 40% at the beginning of August. Now after the August update impressions are up 70%, clicks up only 10%. Overall I'm off about 15 to 20% from my December peak. Lets see if the new upward trend continues into December!

[Martin Ice Web]

Now everyone with small businesses websites can finally live better and make a lot of money,

Interestingly, this update has wiped out our most informational pages, that have been hand written and the topic has been well researched.
These pages gave customers the opportunity to see what item they could choose and why. And it is NOT like " the 10 best... " or something like that.
Just plain information pros and contras for item properties.

[EditorialGuy]

we don´t optimise for SEs anymore

I never did. I don't even do keyword research. To borrow from an old Matt Cutts line, I write about "things, not strings."

I do use descriptive page names and titles, HTML headings (h1, h2, etc.), and so on, because those are recognized best practices that I've been following since 1995 (before Google was born).

[renatovieira]

G analytics is broken or this update killed my main site. Has anyone else noticed this huge drop today?

[NickMNS]

G analytics, you mean GA4, the #*$!ified version of the original Universal Analytics. You can't depend on it to provide you with accurate numbers without waiting for a long delay, at least 48hrs, and even then!