October 2024 Google Search Observations

[Micha]

Could Google finally make up its mind? The back and forth is really getting on my nerves. One day it's really good, the next day it drops, etc. Many keywords jump back and forth in the ranking. A little consistency would be really good for the nerves.

[edited by: not2easy at 1:34 pm (utc) on Oct 1, 2024]
[edit reason] New month, new thread [/edit]

[superclown2]

Big changes in the UK today. Relevance to the search term comes a distant second to domain authority. Looking for something specific? Forget it.

If this was 20001 with lots of competition from real search engines Google would disappear without trace.

[christianz]

Big changes in the UK today. Relevance to the search term comes a distant second to domain authority. Looking for something specific? Forget it.

Huge problem. This is type of ensh-tifaction of search (not giving you what you search for, but what works for ads better) is not unique to Google. I have DDG as my default and it does the same. Extremely frustrating.

Is there a search engine that can be integrated as default on Chrome that still respects your search input and not treat you like a child?

[ichthyous]

Big changes in the UK today. Relevance to the search term comes a distant second to domain authority. Looking for something specific? Forget it.

That's right...this is what I reported seeing last month in the US serps. I had a small drop in DA out of the blue after a decent increase this summer...I immediately started losing about 15% of my top 3 ranking terms AND dropped from #1-#2 to #6 on terms I have been at the top of for a decade. It was a brutal, across the board, rapid demotion.

***However***...that has now somewhat reversed in the last two days so don't freak out if you see your site get hammered out of the blue. I am seeing a decent (but not yet full) recovery of top 3 terms over the last two days. I have popped back into the spots I was occupying before for some of my most important searches and visibility took a big jump up after a week solid of dropping. Nothing has changed on my end except updates to the layout css on my lowest level pages

Google seems all over the place right now, but if you manage to get your domain authority higher it helps to smooth everything...fewer drops and much steadier traffic.

[RedBar]

I have DDG as my default and it does the same.

WTF's happened at DDG ? It's slowly been getting worse and worse and now I see an AI precis for my widgets

Insofar as an alternative SE is concerned I'm having to do the same as I have done with accurate and relevant news channels for the past few years ... Give up with the mass cut and paste propaganda until I find honesty, it's easy enough to spot.

[christianz]

WTF's happened at DDG ? It's slowly been getting worse and worse

DDG and Bing are full of spam. Any chance of Bing gaining market share on Google is gone. It seems like they are very naive and way behind in terms of sophistication of models/methods for ranking and filtering sites. HCU kind of set Google apart and gave them a lead that Microsoft doesn't even seem to care closing up.

Otherwise, if you want to entertain yourself or convince yourself of validity of the Dead Internet Theory, just search for something specific on Bing/DDG and click on page 3.

But I do still prefer DDG over Google as my default/navigational search engine. For other reasons.

[gatormark]

I can't believe how much Google throttled my site this afternoon. I was on pace for the best day of the year at 2 PM and then Google said, "Whoa, that's too much" and shut down my traffic and revenue the second half of the day.

[Ingall]

I thought that Google wanted to do something about expired domain abuse. The exact opposite is the case. Purchased expired domains with unrelated affiliate spam are dominating the SERPs like never before. Only domain authority counts, Google doesn't care about topic relevance. In Germany, a former site about "care in old age" with high domain authority ranks first for potency drugs and diet products.

Buy an expired domain with high authority and you can upload any garbage you want to it. You will be the winners on Google.

[Micha]

@Ingall This is not the only keyword for which spam websites are currently doing well in our country. In Germany, this is taking on really strange proportions. Fake stores in particular are currently ranking high.

Well, and otherwise: Google doesn't seem to like my news site anymore, after two really really good weeks everything is back to the way it was before. It was probably a mistake and Google has noticed that small websites are suddenly performing better, so this had to be corrected. At least some stable growth would have been nice, but I probably won't see that again.

[Martin Ice Web]

Lets summarize the last updates over the last 3 years.
All the updates that should have increased the quality of serps have just been done the opposite. With every "new" deal of algorithm changes they flattend the way for scrapers, AI and black hat technics.
Besides this google managed that users accept ads as search results while doing all the stuff (ads, non readable text) that every webmaster gets puniched for.
But i see a big shift in the last month away from Shop sales to amazon sales. Justified by the lack of quality that googles serps represent.
A year ago I realy thought amazon would struggle because in most cases they are way more expensive than "normal" shops but with googles help they will for sure extend their marketshare.

[morpheus83]

We have had the worst september ever and October is looking even more dismal. Is anyone else continuing to see wild shifts in rankings?

[christianz]

Another big drop on October 1st. Worst traffic I have seen in long time. And all signs suggest it will only get worse.

[superclown2]

s anyone else continuing to see wild shifts in rankings

Try an experiment.
1) Clear cookies then check the SERPs on Chrome for a particular search term.
2) Change your apparent location by using your mobile phone as a wifi hub. Clear cookies. Check the SERPs on Chrome for that same search term.
4) Switch to a different computer if you have one at home and repeat these.

If you are like me you will get four slightly different sets of results.

Now OK we know why changing your apparent locality gives different results. But changing computers? Neither of which are currently logged into a Google account?

I should add that both computers have identical specifications but have slightly different software installed.

So why do I get different results on two identical specification computers with deleted cookies at the same location and using the same IP address?

Just how much more is Google spying onus?

[renatovieira]

Veeery slow today...

[ichthyous]

Started off normally, but at 10am sharp traffic dropped off a cliff. Once again it's all USA traffic, which is -42% at 11am. Rest of world is very high...in fact USA traffic has dropped to only 48% of my total traffic now. First time in 20+ years USA was less than half my traffic.

[renatovieira]

@ichthyous - Same here. Very strange. I notice this on my other sites, in other languages and niches. I think it's some tweak from the last update or a new one not yet declared...

[christianz]

Could also be not ranking related but just Google forcing more AI overviews and other types of Googlespam in the US, to milk their Q4 revenue.

[RedBar]

Just how much more is Google spying onus?

I use VPNs on all my office equipmet and mobile phones, the past couple of weeks some of G's properties have suspected I'm a bot and have not allowed me to view without logging-in ... I have not logged-in.

WebmasterWorld

Note: Cookie support required to login

This is also a PITA = Less participation on my part.

[Micha]

Just how much more is Google spying onus?

A lot! As the video here shows.

[youtube.com ]

[not2easy]

@ Micha - That link was posted yesterday in its own thread here: [webmasterworld.com...] ;)

@RedBar -

Note: Cookie support required to login

Cookies here are for features functionality, not tracking. Nobody's selling user data here. The only ads here are in-house. You can control the level of data shared in your browser - for most modern browsers. If you use an ad-blocker here you can see what it blocks. :)

[Micha]

@not2easy oh ... okay, I'll pay into the “beer box” because I forgot to check beforehand.

[BigKat]

Google forcing more AI overviews and other types of Googlespam in the US

The purpose of a search engine is to help users find our useful sites, which would otherwise not have been found without the assistance of a search engine. Google has become an endless loop of aggressive Googlespam chock full of ads, refinements and AIO content lifted from our sites. Our pages, if you can even find them, are buried under a growing mountain of Googlespam. Google has gone way too far.

I have limited use for Google these days either professionally or personally. The same applies to Youtube which displays an ad nearly every two minutes in longer videos. For short videos, the length of ads often exceeds that of the video itself.

[saladtosser]

BigKat + you want YouTube Premium, a year from now YouTube Premium will show 1/2 ads then you want YouTube Premium Plus, 3 years from now YouTube Premium Plus will show 2 ads per video, you will then want "YouTube Premium Plus... Premium" and so on and so on! Capitalism baby!

[christianz]

I didn't even know people are still using YouTube without uBlock. Can you even do it without risking brain injury from all the ads?

[EditorialGuy]

I didn't even know people are still using YouTube without uBlock.

Content creators deserve to earn some money. Besides, short commercial-style ads aren't nearly as annoying as having a YouTuber stop his or her narrative for several minutes to pitch VPNs, mental-health referrals, prepared meals, or some other sponsor.

[saladtosser]

[seroundtable.com...] Dunno about you guys but I have NEVER seen the massive ranking changes I'm seeing at the moment of everything I follow, results completely dropping in and out of SERPS by the hour for the past week. My site seems stable give or take but loads of others are coming and going in every niche I follow!

[ichthyous]

Huge drop today...Yesterday USA traffic ended up -12%, the biggest drop I have seen in quite a while. Today seems even worse, with USA traffic very low this morning. The rest of the world is still zooming along, only USA is being throttled to death.

[Gotcha]

Hello, I am making a lot of efforts to increase the traffic of my tech blog. On Bing, my efforts have paid off, I have 2.1K impressions and 3.4K clicks, but on Google, very few impressions and clicks. I checked on Google Search Console, there’s no problem, and I don’t have any manual actions. Please help, I don’t know what to do. It feels like Google hates my blog or has penalized it. I’m thinking of changing my domain name?

[Micha]

The rollercoaster continues, after a few bad days, traffic has increased significantly again today, as traffic from Discover is back (no idea if true, but according to some reports, Google News had some problems in the past few days, which explains the drop). What irritates me a bit is the strong increase in traffic from the US, we don't serve that market at all.

@Gotcha If things are going well on Bing, that's something. A new URL doesn't mean your blog will take off on Google. It would be better to analyze the competition, see what you can do better (also in terms of technology), become better known (natural backlink building, on social media, etc.) and persevere.

[Gotcha]

@Micha + yes you are right, but buying quality backlinks costs a lot $500 to $1000 and even more, if I had that amount of money I would have invested it on Google Ads to have more visibility (that's what Google wants us to pay to be better ranked)