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]

[Micha]

Yesterday was an absolute record day for my news page. Today it has calmed down again, but there are still a lot of visitors. But 87 percent of the traffic comes from Discover.
If this is an update, then a lot is going wrong. Yesterday, I kept getting fake shops in the top three hits for product searches. Having said that, I'm seeing more and more smaller websites in Discover here in Germany. Let's see how long that lasts...

[ichthyous]

I am seeing a big drop in USA traffic today USA...-39% at 10:45am. USA traffic is nothing like two weeks ago. UK and the rest of the world are still very strong. After a burst of orders after labor day new customer inquiries are again very slow, but not quite as bad as earlier in 2024. Perhaps after the elections it will pick up in the US again. That is if we don't have Israel starting WW3 in the Middle East...

[saladtosser]

Ever since AI overviews came out, I rarely—if ever—visit websites anymore (unless I'm shopping, of course). Remember when Google's mission was to "organize the world's information"? Well, I suspect they'll soon need to swap "organize" for "supply," "deliver," or even "create." The open web is definitely in its death throes! I wonder how long til they eye forbs and the rest of the big boys, gotta beat that next quarter no matter what!

[ichthyous]

Ever since AI overviews came out, I rarely—if ever—visit websites anymore (unless I'm shopping, of course). Remember when Google's mission was to "organize the world's information"? Well, I suspect they'll soon need to swap "organize" for "supply," "deliver," or even "create." The open web is definitely in its death throes!

We are all forced to use AI overview now, there's no choice. I find it useful, despite the fact that it might be working against us. It's not always accurate and I definitely click on the links out next to the info if I want to confirm. I have not seen a drastic decline in traffic myself since it was rolled out, but I have noticed a certain inability to get content to rank now. It's like Google has certain sites pegged for certain terms and nothing you do moves the needle. Domain authority is counting for a lot these days.

I do not believe the web is in its death throes yet, but between mobile apps, AI, and sheer competition from other sites it's definitely going to get a lot harder to make a living online. It's all going to go to a small number of conglomerate sites owned by huge parent companies and / or monopolies.

[RedBar]

My other half's 8 year old iPhone 6s Plus suddenly has important apps disappearing with a notice stating that the OS needs to be updated which is not possible any more therefore it was bite the bullet time. She tried Android, I won't do that again!

What buying options did I have for a SIM free iPhone 15 model? Basically none at all apart from the half-a-dozen mobile operators and a few of the big brand name stores. She did not want the AI 16.

ALL of them were selling the same phone at the same price except for one operator at £20 less. Ok there were loads of different options for contracts however that is not how we roll.

Is this the future, big brands not competing with pricing, is this "illegal"? Surely this is price fixing? I'm already checking this out on the gov.uk site.

[not2easy]

You can find used iPhones on the Apple store (refurbs and guaranteed)and at some of their certified partners, like MacSales (OWC) Even Amazon sells used iPhones, the carriers supply the SIM card. The 6s is no longer supported because it does not have 5G hardware.

[RedBar]

She wanted new, refurbished prices here are crazy, occasionlly Ebay has resonable offers.

This is not a 5G issue, it is an Apple OS withdrawal of app problem, specifcally a major UK bank.

I have my own source for SIM cards, in 30 years I have never paid their extortionate rip-off contract rates.

[gatormark]

Today has been the best day in a while. My traffic hasn’t changed, but the revenue has increased...better than last year at this time. I hope it keeps up, but I’m purposefully not optimistic.

[christianz]

Weakness in traffic continues.

Meanwhile the AI bots are going crazy. Scraping activity at new all time highs.

[saladtosser]

I see this to christianz, its bad enough they are scraping our content but we are also paying for the hosting bandwidth for them to rip us off, no compensation for our content or providing accessibility for our content to be nabbed! Couldn't make it up 10 years ago!

[saladtosser]

It's a bit like someone robbing your house and you holding the door for them as they do it! Remember the old saying "Google doesn't owe you traffic" the fan boys use to spout? Really? Really? They do if they are scraping your content no?!

[christianz]

In US slavery is alive and well. Google is expecting you to be a slave for them - to work for free. Create content that only their scraper bots will read and then they will spin it within the LLM and present to humans along with advertising in the SERP.

Back to the subject - today there appears to be another drop in traffic. Previous drop was September 21st.

[Micha]

Yes, I can see the drop in traffic here too. It was fine until 2 p.m., then the traffic dropped sharply. But that can change again due to the constant back and forth in an hour.

[ichthyous]

I am seeing continued weakness in USA traffic, but now it is spreading to other English language traffic (CA and AU)...a typical pattern for the last few years now and an indicator to me that we are reverting back to the old norms.

USA traffic is always on a drip whereas the other locations are flowing freely, especially UK which is almost always fairly strong:

The United Kingdom
+139%
The United States
-54%
The United Arab Emirates
+326%
India
+95%
Germany
+143%
Canada
-60%
Denmark
+383%
Australia
-40%
Spain
+305%
The Netherlands
+224%
Belgium
+265%

[EditorialGuy]

I see this to christianz, its bad enough they are scraping our content

Of course they're scraping your content. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, it it means you get a place in the SERPs lottery. Obviously, everyone can't rank in the top 10 (or even the top 20) for any given query. There are no guarantees.

IMO, the problem isn't in Google or any other search engine crawling and indexing your pages for possible use in search results, it's in their using your pages to train their own AI content-creation software.

[ichthyous]

33% drop in USA traffic today by 5pm...something is definitely brewing.

[Mark_A]

How will the practice of SEO develop if searchers increasingly are browsing the output of AI modules at various search engines?

Will ranking in the top 10 for a keyword increasingly be irrelevant?

[Micha]

@Mark_A I expect that Google will become less and less relevant as a traffic source. Diversification is the new magic word. Otherwise, it won't be possible to survive as a small player.

[Mark_A]

Hi Micha yes I can see that happening. Frustrating because we just made an agreement with an SEO company to work on our site. The work could be compromised if AI makes big changes to how searchers search.

[Markedd]

@EditorialGuy "Of course they're scraping your content. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, it it means you get a place in the SERPs lottery."
Oh, but it is a bad thing. Why would anyone visit a website if the answer is taken directly from the websites and then summarized on Google.com?
And if you're going to say that people will enter to read the context, have you ever visited Reddit or any social media website? The percentage of people that read beyond the title of an article is so small, you may as well say that no one bothers.

I already see many people giving up on writing articles, so the web is getting much smaller already. I am curious to see how it will look in a year..

[christianz]

so the web is getting much smaller already

Exactly what I have been saying. The web is shrinking. But Google's index is rapidly growing. And, of course, it is all spam or, in their own lingo, "unhelpful content".

With AI overviews Google broke contract with us. It will simply mean that they will have to pay for all content it shows in the SERPs. Nothing of decent quality will be freely available/scrapable. Ironically, the end result will probably be lower profit margin for Google than before introducing the AI content theft features. Assuming Google even keeps its monopoly intact.

[engine]

I did ask this question the other day, Is Google Search Still the Predominant Source of Web Traffic? [webmasterworld.com]

[Markedd]

@christianzI think that if a model works, then it will make a come-back. The model is free info for some reasonable amount of ads which has not really failed yet. The issue is that the middle-man, Google, has figured out that there are no rules and they can eat the whole cake. I hope that some smart people with deeper pockets than myself realize that they can make millions by copying what Google has been doing for years until they got stupid.

[saladtosser]

@EditorialGuy I was specifically referring to the scrapping for LLMs not the scraping for being listed in the SERPS or featured snippets, that's no problem.

Think about it—humans have to invest time, effort, and money to gain knowledge and experience. But so-called "artificial intelligence" doesn’t pay for that; it simply absorbs our collective knowledge and then sells it back to us or others in one form or another. It profits from what we've worked for without having to go through the same process, turning our experience into a product for its own gain. Don't think, just keep consuming product!

@Markedd When you say "free," what do you mean? Sure, there's no upfront charge, but I’d argue that Google has effectively become a tax on the world. With their ad monopoly, businesses don’t absorb those inflated ad fees—they pass them directly onto consumers, the so-called "free" users of Google. These hidden costs drive up prices everywhere. So, in reality, Google isn’t free to use; we all pay for it indirectly through higher costs across the board even if we don't use search!. I apologise if I misunderstood your post bud!

[morpheus83]

Seems a major reshuffle is underway I am seeing old pages and archive pages pop up on Analytics.

[mhansen]

I'm still seeing great recovery and continued growth in visibility from the August 2024 update on an HCU affected site. What I am not seeing is a recovery of the actual visitors coming from Google. On a very specific, end-of-funnel commercial query where I previously ranked in organic position #2 prior to HCU compared to now, where the same page (with moderate changes from 2023-2024) ranks in #1 organic position, the click data is much less.

In SEMR, this query shows roughly 3k monthly volume. Impression/click data from GSC.

Prior to HCU Sept 2023 / Organic Position #2, 3,410 impressions, 912 clicks.
After August 2024 HCU/Core / Organic Position #1, 3,246 impressions, 347 clicks.

This suggests to me that Google has been very aggressively shaking those couch cushions to keep people on site as much as possible.

[Micha]

@mhansen I see the same thing on my news page here in Germany: lots of impressions, minimal clicks, and the divergence is just as high as yours. If Discover wasn't doing so well, Google traffic would be practically dead. Besides, the ranking keeps going up, but it doesn't do any good.

And I see the same thing in the shop. It has now reached a point where its existence is threatened. The shop no longer generates even 100 euros in sales per day, despite increasing visitor numbers, AdWords, etc. I feel really sorry for the owner; he is completely desperate and I am at a loss because absolutely nothing works.

@Mark_A To be honest, I'm sick of these SEO idiots. Just from what I read on Twitter (sorry, Elon Musk's fake news booth), I feel like checking out what's going on in some people's heads.
It seems to me that only a few in the industry have realized that it doesn't matter what place you are on Google, it just doesn't work. But they continue to try to take the money out of website owners' pockets with arguments that are total nons

[mhansen]

Besides, the ranking keeps going up, but it doesn't do any good.

For my own curiosity, I found a different page that holds a strong #2 position for a similar query. (end of funnel, high quality commercial/transactional intent visitor)

SEMR, this query shows roughly 6,890 monthly volume.

Prior to HCU Sept 2023 / Organic Position #2, 5,726 impressions, 1,202 clicks. (roughly 21% CTR)
After August 2024 HCU/Core / Organic Position #2, 6,766 impressions, 458 clicks. (roughly 7% CTR)

[sk7411]

2 days of growth , completely undone today. Makeup your mind Google!

[ichthyous]

I now have a domain authority drop of one point and I am bleeding top ranking terms on desktop and mobile by the day. I have dropped across the board, but it really only seems to be affecting USA traffic. In the past when this happened (either up or down) it would usually be another 6 months before it reversed. These days the swings in gaining and losing big numbers of terms is happening in a couple of weeks. All of it dependent on your domain's authority it seems.