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]

[Micha]

@gotcha I didn't mean that you should buy any. A small example: Search Wikipedia for suitable articles on your topics and see if you can supplement these articles with a link to you (so what I mean is to expand an article with your own text and then put a link to you in there) - these must of course be useful additions.
Of course, I can only recommend basic things as I don't know your website.

By the way: Google Ads brings less traffic than many people think.

[RedBar]

Something's happening / happened in the UK.

So far this week our hotel venue site is -22% v September average however today, Friday 4th October, after 13 hours of our Googleday, the site is -91.5%, yes, 91.5%.

I've never seen this before and Friday is usually a good day since, apart form the start of the weekend, it also happens to be a busy market day plus the weather's lovely .

I need to delve further.

Our global .com is looking normal.

[Gotcha]

As for me, I was not affected by the last updates (March and August) but my traffic is not increasing either

[ichthyous]

Something big is brewing, my USA traffic was -14% yesterday...UK and UAE also took big drops at -14% and -20% respectively. Today once again USA is starting the day at -40% and I am seeing drops of up to 91% on some of my most highly trafficked pages! Some (not all) main category pages are down between 33% and 77% this morning.

That is while I am gaining top 3 ranking in pages again, so it's another one of those Google mystery moments where the traffic is just gone for days but nobody knows where it went to. Google announced yesterday that it was rolling out advertisements in AI Overviews, but I doubt that this is the reason for the drop in traffic in my case. Anyone else have any theories?

[morpheus83]

Unfortunately, the sad truth is, we are hit by the HCU update, and G is throttling our website.

[ichthyous]

Unfortunately, the sad truth is, we are hit by the HCU update, and G is throttling our website

Didn't that finish up earlier in the year? Why would you be hit now?

[BigKat]

Google announced yesterday that it was rolling out advertisements in AI Overviews, but I doubt that this is the reason for the drop in traffic in my case. Anyone else have any theories?

@ichthyous

Not just ads in AI Overviews, but other AI features including search results organized by AI in the USA starting with recipes and what they call meal inspirations. Posted yesterday on WebmasterWorld: [webmasterworld.com...]

[l1fejosh]

Our traffic has been drying up since Sept. 12...although visibility and keyword positions remain growing...?

[ichthyous]

Not just ads in AI Overviews, but other AI features including search results organized by AI in the USA starting with recipes and what they call meal inspirations. Posted yesterday on WebmasterWorld: [webmasterworld.com...]

Thanks @BigKat...this is not good. Soon it will be implemented across all searches, that's for sure. If Google is now ordering searches for the user using AI then there will be far less traffic unless they make the links very visible. The tiny little link icons next to AI overviews now are intentionally understated. This looks a bit better, especially if the image is also linked to the site. But these days google is just looking for any opportunity to reduce all outbound traffic, so I suspect this will be a catastrophe for websites when it is rolled out widely.

[superclown2]

Business for us is way down to less than 50% of last month. The main reason is the pile of ads, many containing multiple boxes (which can in effect make four ads into twelve) and 'enhancements' burying the generics on Android. On desktop the generics themselves are headed in our sectors by the same few big companies (which, purely coincidentally, are big spenders on Google ads) regardless of any long tail search term entered; or any tail at all come to think of it.

Is as many of us expected; Google is going all out to maximise income before the innumerable legal axes fall. Something that their endless appeals to ever higher courts will put off for as long as possible.

[saladtosser]

Only thing any of us really knows for sure is as bad as traffic is now, this time next year we will wish for these levels of traffic, we can expect only more and more Google spam features taking more traffic going forward, sadly!

[superclown2]

Google want to be the source of all information on the Internet. This will take away choice for searchers as this advertising company masquerading as a search engine seeks to make all their decisions for them.

This is intolerable on so many different levels. The only hope for the Web to survive as a useful resource and not some glorified shopping arcade is the destruction of this company.

[Samsam1978]

Not many of us left here posting as we have been wiped out. I am tired I have been doing this stuff for 16 years and I am old and my health is not great. I am sick of all the changes constantly, had enough. I'm just leaving the site as it is for now, its still making thousands a month but a fraction of what it use to, I just don't know why they are decreasing
all these adsense sites that provide money for them. AI overviews don't have ads in my niche so google are loosing money and so am I. And, I am going to have a long break now and see what it is like in a few months.

[Micha]

Google want to be the source of all information on the Internet

And Google's tactics are actually pretty good. They take other people's work, add some AI magic, and send fewer and fewer visitors to the sources.
Seriously, I just don't understand why the responsible authorities are having such a hard time with the topic of AI and copyright. It's no secret that data from thousands of websites is used for training. The operators have no way of preventing this, but they have to live with the consequences.

When you consider how Google acts when it believes that its copyright has been infringed, the whole thing seems like a damn bad joke.

[Samsam1978]

I don't know what the future holds, my site is 15 years old and its only 25% of what it use to be due to AI - the crazy thing is that there is NO ads in AI overviews for my niche. It is not going to be good for everyone here. All our websites are going to be gone, because we can't afford the hosting. And, Google will not have any sites to point to, I can't understand it tbh. I dread to think of what the internet looks like in 20 years.

[ichthyous]

Is as many of us expected; Google is going all out to maximise income before the innumerable legal axes fall. Something that their endless appeals to ever higher courts will put off for as long as possible.

Google sees an existential threat from Open AI and AI search competitors like Perplexity. The threat is probably overblown as the number of AI companies just keeps expanding and it isn't clear that people really want to turn to AI search rather than traditional web search.

But Google is getting ahead of the curve by rapidly folding new AI search options into web search. AI overviews has been a success for Google in terms of feedback from users so why would it stop?

The old search of blue links is already dead, Google is just slowly phasing it out rather than pulling the plug. Google has already won the AI search war because it has both the information and the user base to experiment with. In another year or two there will be nothing but AI assisted search, or perhaps there will be two tabs...AI as the default and the old search as a fallback. But that will cost Google in terms of resources to maintain so at some point old web search will be retired. This is progress after all, no company can be expected to stay static for 20+ years.

The question for us is how does this new Google affect our bottom line? Clearly the ability to game the system and stay at the top of search using various spamming methods like link networks is going away. Google will use an amalgam of scraped data from numerous sources to produce results so that means that no single website will benefit from the traffic from any search.

I think that Google knows that there will always be enough data...there is too much competition as it is now. Certainly many sites will close but perhaps the future is just bound to be many fewer but larger sites producing content at massive scale hoping to drown the competition and dominate all of the links in Google's AI. This will drive most of us out of the business.

Finally, what are the repercussions for society when only a few mega sites are producing all the content being used to train the AI? These sites can spin and manipulate the data any way they see fit without any counterpoint or differing perspective. I think that trend will have to be well under way before governments really wake up to the threat of having so few companies dominate all of the available information on the internet. What is the remedy? It's hard to battle multiple trillion dollar corporations other than by forming a political consensus across party lines and geographic borders...then we are talking about breaking up these huge huge companies through governmental action. That is the only long-term outcome I can see...

[RedBar]

I'm still expereincing an unusual consistency the last few days with our .co.uk hotel venue that has 90+% a UK audience.

Ever since Wednesday 2nd October our page views per visitor have droped by 15%. This has been for 4 consecutive days and appears to be continuing into Sunday. Saturdays are always the busiest day yet overall PVs were down 35%.

In comparison, at the moment, our global .coms have been steadily average.

[ichthyous]

This from the WSJ - [wsj.com ]

If you don't have the WSJ you can read it here for free - [msn.com ]

Google’s share of the U.S. search ad market is expected to drop below 50% next year for the first time in over a decade, according to the research firm eMarketer.

Amazon is expected to have 22.3% of the market this year, with 17.6% growth, compared with Google’s 50.5% share and its 7.6% growth.

Not sure where they are getting these numbers from. Google's share is far higher than 50% as far as I know, but a 22% share for Amazon is still huge...I assume that is all product search. The article also mentions TikTok search and Ai Search via Perplexity.

Oddly ommitted are Meta search, which is probably larger than TikTok for sure, and ChatGPT which just announced AI search in order to compete with Perplexity.

I wish I could use Amazon as a platform but those forced return policies just don't work for what I sell, and it is not used at all in my corner of the market.

[Samsam1978]

@ichthyous

Okay, here is my take on this.

Google is pursuing this answer engine approach because they anticipate being broken up. The search function cannot sustain itself without its advertising counterpart. It is heavy and dangerous. If Google were to support publishers by arguing in court that without AdSense/AdX, and keeping traditional search millions of websites would cease to exist, it would serve as a strong defense, likely leading to a favorable outcome. However, it seems that this strategy isn't under consideration. This is the best defense to stop the company from being split up. I would certainly consider this approach to Google.

[oldog]

@samsam1978…..”now, its still making thousands a month but a fraction of what it use to, I just don't know why they are decreasing ”
You must be very greedy mate….

and then you said “All our websites are going to be gone, because we can't afford the hosting”
So your hosting costs are thousands and thousands ? ( meaning hundreds of websites)
IMHO Probably Google discovered your huge network ( probably interlinking) and it did well by puting a break on your project….

[NeapTide]

@ichthyous indeed. The traditional search is dying and we the webmasters are dying. We were generating nice content and now we are getting thrown under the bus. If you got ecommerce site you might survive but information and other websites will die eventually.

I had 1 info site that I have shutdown during the start of this year. All its traffic was gone. In the past it even got links from wikipedia and popular battery brands websites because I was providing diagrams that didn't exist before. First people stole all the images published them on their websites, google picked them up and started displaying in image search cutting off large sum of traffic to website, later AI came to quickly give all the answers. It was the last nail in the coffin.

I am already in transition phase now. I will shutdown remaining two websites in future and totally switch to apps and game development. At least I could sell those to users or generate revenue with ads. Also those get installed in users phone so google can't force people to uninstall those. They can only terminate your developer account. But then there is iPhone as well where you could continue developing and releasing new games and apps. F"""k Google. F""""k this POS greedy selfish self-centered company.

[RedBar]

My traffic inconsistency is still bizarre.

For my UK hotel site last weeks lower numbers seemed to have rectified itself Sunday and Monday yet today it's gone back to almost 1:1 page views per visitor.

My global .com was running fine until Friday night then on Saturday it jumped straight off the cliff edge and has remained there since however page views per visitor remained average.

There is some unusual manipulation going on without a doubt.

[ichthyous]

How about home page traffic dropping 40% from day to day without any explanation? Yesterday I found a competitor running ads for my brand name and the ad was huge and came at the top before my own website's organic placement. But traffic to my home page was normal yesterday. Today no ads showing, but home page traffic -40%. Overall traffic is normal, it's just not going to the home page. All of it very strange...

[Bewenched]

Here in the US our 25y old retail website has seen massive fluctuations. One day the phones are off the hook and the next day it's crickets.

One odd thing we've seen:
We sell widgets different brands and different styles (very specific stuff) and if we sell one item 99% chance we'll sell one or two of them back to back, never really seen that before. We have over 6000 of these brand specific widgets, but we'll get back to back sales of the same style, color and mfg part number. Bizarre, never seen this before.

[Samsam1978]

That's good to know that you are getting some sales.

[Samsam1978]

@RedBar - yes I am seeing this too and more local searches, I get influx of UK traffic then on a Friday traffic gone and Sunday is biggest day for bookings. I have not seen the ups and downs like this before.

[lesseo]

This topic was extremely useful for me, thank you. I am experiencing the same ups and downs. But this has been going on for 1 year. Although we made very strong improvements especially in the onpage area, unfortunately it was not reflected in the serp results.

[not2easy]

There have been new recent decisions in various Google US Court cases posted here: [webmasterworld.com...]
(U.S. Judge Rules Google's online search monopoly is illegal)

And here: [webmasterworld.com...]
(Jury Finds Google Illegally Monopolized App Store: FTC Outlines Remedy Concerns)

[RedBar]

unfortunately it was not reflected in the serp results.

And therein lies the conundrum!

If one does not have a favoured news or big brand site no one knows just how long a site improvement make take to have any effect if at all. One may be lucky and see a difference within a couple of months but then again it could be 6-12 months.

I can see indexing and ranking within 24 hours for new "stuff" on a home page yet a new page only one level down can take weeks / months and bear in mind that this is usually for exclusive new content ,not something for which I am trying to compete.

It's been a lottery for years now, about 12 or so.

[ichthyous]

USA and Canada traffic are becoming increasingly tamped down this October...today I'm -48% at 11:30am for both countries. The two have basically gone hand in hand for years, so I think it's one big North American market where Google is concerned.

I'm also seeing big swings in top ranking terms from day to day now...I can lose 10%+ of my top-10 ranking terms in a day, and maybe the next day all right back again.