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]

I'm in. Today there was a big decline, the traffic is currently as bad as it was before the update in August. What really annoyed me: Today there was an important topic in my area, we were the first to publish an article, countless others copied it, and my article cannot be found.
However, it seems that Google News is not being updated correctly. The topics page of my website is completely overcrowded with old articles.

On the other hand, sales in the shop have increased significantly today. The ranking chaos is annoying. A little calm would be nice for the nerves.

[christianz]

I now have a domain authority drop of one point and I am bleeding top ranking terms on desktop and mobile by the day

What domain authority? If you mean "Domain Rating" score assigned by AHrefs, don't worry, it's a randomly generated number.

[cooler29]

@christianz : exactlly! :)

[christianz]

Sharp drop in traffic on September 27 7PM GMT. All or most of the drop is concentrated in US traffic. Just like last week, drop begins on Friday and fully manifests starting with Saturday.

It's like the Google's money squeezing team is working Monday to Friday and when they have a new squeezing idea/feature ready, they launch it on Friday and let it roll out over weekend.

[ichthyous]

What domain authority? If you mean "Domain Rating" score assigned by AHrefs, don't worry, it's a randomly generated number.

Domain Authority is a real thing, whether or not you think that Ahrefs, Moz, SEMrush and the rest are spinning it to get us to buy their plans. My DA went up this summer and my site was unstoppable in adding top3/10 ranking terms for months. It turned on a dime about 10 days ago and started to lose top ranking terms and in the last week big drops in ranking across my top terms...I have dropped from #1 to #3, #3 to #7 etc. About 15% of my top 3 terms were lost in three days. All of that coincided with notifications that my DA dropped 1-2 points (back to what it was before the summer increase). All of it a coincidence?

DA is just a metric these sites use to gauge how influential a site is, but I find that it's a fairly accurate one.

As an aside, I notice that these big losses and drops always seem to happen before the holidays. The sites that are now at the top, with a few exceptions, are uniformly the same ones across each search term and they are all huge corporate sites (with the highest DA).

[christianz]

DA is just a metric these sites use to gauge how influential a site is, but I find that it's a fairly accurate one.

I have seen completely fake websites with 60, 70 and higher AHrefs DR. You can basically get whatever DR you want, if you want. Except for the very high values when it becomes a scale/logistical problem to spawn that many backlinks.

I think mostly this DR is used as a ploy for link / guest post sellers to charge more for article placement on their worthless fake website.

[ichthyous]

I have seen completely fake websites with 60, 70 and higher AHrefs DR. You can basically get whatever DR you want, if you want. Except for the very high values when it becomes a scale/logistical problem to spawn that many backlinks.

I think mostly this DR is used as a ploy for link / guest post sellers to charge more for article placement on their worthless fake website.

If you mean link networks, yes. They manage to inflate the DA by interlinking them all, or whatever tactic. But that is a temporary boost at best, and very easily spotted so not sure why anyone would pay these vendors of links from obvious trash sites. Perhaps its people who don't know any better...

[Rlilly]

Out of the 30 listings for Popular Products with Images.. 29 were Amazon listings, with one from Etsy
WTF why not redirect Google results to Amazon..

[ichthyous]

What I am seeing is my site is being moved to the Images section at top, where I often have the first image or multiple images in the top six (above the fold)...then it has been dropped drastically in the search results below. It's clear that Google is now not permitting sites to occupy both spaces...if you rank well at top in images plan on big drops in the search results

[freshpaul]

@ichthyous

Are you talking about the free merchant center listings?

[ichthyous]

@freshpaul. No, I am referring to the huge block of image links at top of page that says "IMAGES:". I am seeing it at the top of the page (block of 8, with load more link at bottom) or below some search results (smaller images, block of six).

Even though my site is the first two image links with huge images, the traffic for the associated search is -35% so far today. In the search results under the images I went from top 3 to #6-#7. Keep in mind that the search results are also broken up by a block of videos or people also ask, etc.

My USA traffic is starting each weekday at -54% now and struggling to break even by day's end because of all this. Non-USA traffic is still very strong. I suspect it was rolled out in USA only and will be spreading globally soon enough.

[RedBar]

It's clear that Google is now not permitting sites to occupy both spaces

I first noticed this a few weeks ago however it didn't seem to be consistent, maybe it's propagated through the entire SERPs now. I have thousands of images therefore I'll check some of them out to try and ascertain whether it is still possible to hold All and Images top spots.

[RedBar]

I've tested several of my widgets and some I still hold both #1 spots but what is noticeable that some have definitely been demoted in All or Images which is even more bizarre since those are exclusive global widgets! I'll check some more later.

[System]

New month, new thread at [webmasterworld.com...]

[edited by: not2easy at 1:36 pm (utc) on Oct 1, 2024]