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]

[ChrisWilson]

GA4 has practically been unusable for us. Even with just the basics. Traffic way down for us as well today.

[EditorialGuy]

Our information site's traffic (including Google traffic) has been up for the last several days, but not by enough to compensate for other losses in updates since September, 2022.

As for GA4, I can't stand it, and I use Plausible Analytics for day-to-day monitoring. Every now and then I delve into Ezoic's Big Data Analytics, which is what GA4 should be.

[Fluff_Nutz]

@EG
Same, traffic over here is also on the increase. Has been for the past month now. It makes for a nice change. Now our plan is to try and reclaim that lost traffic from all these past updates. Hoping the nightmare is over now and we can just concentrate on the rebuild. Which I hope can be achieved in the next few months or sometime early next year.

Also agree about the uselessness of GA4. The traffic on it is all over the place. Sometimes, for no real reason, we are reported with having a huge increase of traffic. Like a whooping 500+% increase sometimes. I imagine its bots but last time this happened I saw nothing to indicate as such. Other sites didn't even mention this increase. It feels like a site that is used to report false reports. Which renders it useless. So I don't use any particular site for reports on traffic other than Mediavine.

[Mark_A]

@Chris Wilson and Fluff_Nutz - I also find GA4 pretty useless, it doesn't even count Google Ads traffic correctly let alone clicks from other sources. Don't know what to do about it and flying blind atm.

[Markedd]

@Fluff_Nutz Considering that I went a similar route as you did with the YouTube channel and all, I say that you need to be careful with Google and don't get your hopes up. I know that this is an unsolicited advice, but I think it's better to continue with the exit strategy, if you or any other that went through a similar situation had already planned out. If the website gets back where it was on its own, then you lost nothing (I am 100% sure that those highs are not possible anymore). When Google pulls another stunt, probably in the next few weeks, then you've just lost energy, money and more of your mental health.

[Fluff_Nutz]

@Markedd
Whilst I agree not to trust Google. I likely never will again anyway. They are no longer my main source of traffic any more. Often, coming 4th or 5th in my source list instead. So I'm hoping that this will give me some immunity from their terrible antics. We will see.

[christianz]

Big drop yesterday and today looks terrible as well.

[RedBar]

A consistent -23% since 25th August for my global site. Rankings seem ok however will have a delve this weekend.

What I have noticed is a valid five year old site with very thin content has suddenly appeared in the top rankings for some big widget trade keywords.

[Martin Ice Web]

Someone could think that the end of the update was the update, cause just in time traffic got worse again, sales are non existent from google traffic. google user engagement is near to ZERO.

[ichthyous]

Traffic is ridiculously high since the return from Labor Day holiday for me. Search traffic is up 60% today at 1pm. Yesterday search was up 30% overall. Will be nice if that keeps up, but...

[Micha]

sales are non existent from google traffic

Something I can confirm. It sucks that there's simply nothing you can do about it.

So my news page: traffic remains stable, articles keep ending up on Discover, the ranking is now stable. At least there's been some relief on this front (if it stays that way)

[renatovieira]

There's been a lot of volatility here all day since yesterday. Moments of high traffic, followed by huge drops. Old pages receiving a lot of traffic, then disappearing... The update is definitely still active...

[universenet]

The update is definitely still active...

I am not sure if this we can call update
Better name is calling this
Google Manipulations 24/7/365

[renatovieira]

**Google Manipulations 24/7/365**

It always was!

[EditorialGuy]

I'm not defending Google for the declining value of its SERPs or its increased reliance on brand-name "authority sites" and Reddit, but this article shows what Google and other search engines are up against. (Kudos to Mediavine for taking action.)

[searchenginejournal.com...]

[Markedd]

@EditorialGuy It could become a problem in the future if they wrongly terminate contracts with legit publishers of non-AI content. Is their detection system that infallible?

[EditorialGuy]

It could become a problem in the future if they [MediaVine] wrongly terminate contracts with legit publishers of non-AI content. Is their detection system that infallible?

I'm sure humans are making the decisions. Any automated detection system would merely identify sites for review, IMO.

[Fluff_Nutz]

Looking at the site that got terminated over on Reddit. I used a few of their articles and tested it on an AI site I use. It's good for detecting plagiarism too. At least one article read 95% AI use. However, no AI tool is 100% accurate. So I think there is more to it than simply terminating because of AI. Not saying the site is spamming AI, going by that article it certainly is. BUT...

However, on further inspection I noticed the site had not been active since February. So maybe its more down to inactivity instead? Perhaps the site failed to meet Mediavine's monthly traffic requirements? In last month's thread I mentioned multiple times that Mediavine had contacted me regarding the use of AI. Back then I was also on the brink of giving up on the site as traffic kept falling and I lost focus and motivation. So I was becoming very inactive myself until I recently (because running a business in this niche has been a life long dream of mine, thus I restarted. So far so good!)

So I'm hoping there is more to it than simply assuming one is using AI. There is NEVER a 100% guarantee of that as no tool works like that. I don't even use AI and never will. I have told my team to stay away from it too. So getting contacted out the blue was a real surprise. I spend a good 10-15 minutes editing each and every article, checking for everything in the process.

[Micha]

If it really is the “AI Clickbait Kingpin”, then it is probably a reaction to the Wired article. Such content slingers are not exactly popular with advertising networks and their customers.

Incidentally, the judge in Google's monopoly proceedings wants to rule on the company in August 2025.

[nytimes.com ]

And the next trial begins on Monday. I hope that all the proceedings in the USA and the EU will finally bring something. Even Japan is finally tightening the thumbscrews.

[christianz]

All AI content is spam and should be deranked by search engines and banned by advertising networks, without any exception. I don't even like the idea of using AI image generators for illustrations.

LLMs are useful and fantastic innovation. But nobody should be hosting LLM output on servers and pretending that those are websites. Waste of space and waste of time for anyone unlucky to end up on those pages.

The fact that Google has no clear zero tolerance policy on this is not helping. And neither is the August update which is still rolling out and still giving net boost for this type of spam.

[universenet]

All AI content is spam and should be deranked by search engines and banned by advertising networks, without any exception. I don't even like the idea of using AI image generators for illustrations.

Quora is AI generated
Answer is never in first chapter because reason that people click on link
But Quora is one of the best website for google (together with reddit)
Everyone in google know that Quora is AI generated so what?
Nobody cares
If nobody cares, what does it matter?
All they care about is money and all the other stupid stories.,
about Artificial intelligence-yes or no,
about Spam Yes or no
about SEO yes or no
All that going in water in one second.

[christianz]

Quora is AI generated
Answer is never in first chapter because reason that people click on link
But Quora is one of the best website for google (together with reddit)

AI portion of Quora is spam and should never be ranked. It is like ranking pages with all possible arithmetic operations, instead of ranking calculator app. It is also low quality generic content full of errors and it is also illegal, because LLMs are trained on our content without our permission and used for commercial purposes.

[Shepherd]

...like ranking pages with all possible arithmetic operations, instead of ranking calculator app.

That's beautiful.

[renatovieira]

Lots of volatility today in the SERPs. On my side, positively. Has anyone else noticed?

[EditorialGuy]

I'm not seeing any more volatility than usual today, but we've had a solid increase in Google traffic over the past week or so, at a time of year when traffic is usually declining after our summer peak.

And while this is good news, the increase is nothing in comparison to the losses in Google traffic that we've seen since 2022.

[christianz]

No, it's constant negative trend since mid August and this week has been worst.

[Micha]

The weekend was indeed very weak, but today my news page is seeing a significant increase again.

The problem child remains the shop, which unfortunately continues to be dead and we now fear that we will not survive the month if it stays that way. There are more than enough visitors, but they are not buying anything.

[Mark_A]

@Micha "There are more than enough visitors, but they are not buying anything."

Is there any way you can find out if they are real humans or just robots?

Perhaps invite them to answer a few questions and be put into a draw to win a prize?

[Martin Ice Web]

There are more than enough visitors, but they are not buying anything.

confirmed

Is there any way you can find out if they are real humans or just robots?

this users a humans.

Just with the end of the update sales went close to zero, traffic is up by 50%.
As we have insight in different shops, we can confirm that this is in all verticals at the same time. If queries are totaly mismatched or transactional queries are filtered 100% has to be investigated.

[morpheus83]

We saw a nice uptick on the 4th of September (was very happy as traffic was back to pre update levels), that lasted a day and traffic is back to the update lows. Seeing a lot of volatility though.