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]

[saladtosser]

Something big is just starting again my end! YouTube videos pushed to the very top above literally everything and mad different desktop to mobile results, huge swings, nalways a clear sign somethings starting, anyone else?

[Samsam1978]

Is anyone seeing a decrease in USA traffic due to the hurricane?

[ichthyous]

Is anyone seeing a decrease in USA traffic due to the hurricane?

My USA traffic was down 16% yesterday, and search was down 7%. But Canada, UK, France were all down yesterday and I am noticing a hard clamp on USA/Canada traffic this entire week. Having hurricane hysteria 24/7 doesn't help though.

[EditorialGuy]

Our European travel-planning site's Florida traffic is actually better today than our traffic for several other populous states in the U.S. Go figure.

[gatormark]

Traffic is down in the United States for me as well. I don’t know if it’s because of the hurricanes and the mass destruction in the southeast or because of recent Google update.

[Samsam1978]

Yes I am seeing 10% today from last Thursday so something is going on either the southeast issues or update. I noticed my rankings stayed the same.

[christianz]

Traffic down significantly and also down most in US. Yesterday was probably the lowest traffic in past 12 months.

Ironically, Ahrefs keyword count and "organic traffic" charts are going up over last 30 days, completely disconnected from reality.

It could be that Google is now getting really vicious and aggressive with traffic stealing widgets in the SERPs, especially US.

[ichthyous]

Here we go again...USA is -33% at 1:30 and Canada is -71%. None of this is due to the hurricane in Florida or Yom Kippur.

[renatovieira]

Huge volatility here. My main keyword, which has always been on the third page, is fluctuating positions on the first page. This has never happened to my main site in 5 years...

Has anyone else noticed this big fluctuation today?

[lesseo]

There is an extraordinary fluctuation. I also observe a decrease in traffic in America.

[Samsam1978]

The traffic and bookings are down and I am seeing a massive swing now but I am not sure where the traffic is going as all my competitors are wiped out.

[christianz]

If the changes we are seeing in October, especially last few days and especially in US SERPs, are actually what Google have intended, and not some transient glitch, Google have finally completely lost their minds.

[RedBar]

Friday saw my global .com with its lowest-ever weekday traffic at 50% on a level with my Xmas 2023 metrics.

Today is looking similar at the moment.

UK hotel site did recover but today is looking awful.

[Micha]

I also have fluctuations in the ranking, but the traffic on my news page has stabilized at an acceptable level, I don't have big swings in the daily numbers. To be precise, it has been significantly better for a month than it was before the HCU update. Surprisingly, Search Console shows stable traffic from News and Discover, which has never happened before on my site.

[jchiff]

Nothing new to learn here for most of us, but a nice wrap-up:

Why Google Search is Falling Apart

[youtu.be...]

[gatormark]

For those who don’t live in the United States, the multiple hurricanes that have impacted the United States did not just impact Florida. Significant damage was in North Carolina and Tennessee as well. Complete towns have been destroyed in those states.

[christianz]

And I would expect US traffic to be exactly the same or increase during these Hurricanes, because many people are displaced with their relatives/friends and sitting on their phones even more.

Google however thinks it is great opportunity to roll out very greedy updates, whenever there are large world events. Sometimes opportunistically as cover (I remember a very nasty update exactly when invasion of Ukraine started) and sometimes because of it - US election is very soon and surely Google needs to "curate" the SERPs.

[gatormark]

And I would expect US traffic to be exactly the same or increase during these Hurricanes, because many people are displaced with their relatives/friends and sitting on their phones even more.

@christianz, it doesn't work that way. Many people are still in their homes, if they weren't destroyed, but without power. They are working to rebuild their lives. They are not "sitting on their phones even more" (smh) playing games or watching YouTube. I live in the middle of this turmoil and my nephew lost his house. Fortunately, my state is only bracketed by the destruction.

I don't know if this is the reason for our downturn (could very well be the Google updates), but it is a variable.

[christianz]

I don't know if this is the reason for our downturn (could very well be the Google updates), but it is a variable.

It is Google. It is always Google. Traffic is down on West Coast as well, and every other state that has nothing to do with hurricanes. Such things would be a factor for local business site but not for a global site.

Saturday traffic was slightly better than Friday but today it looks terrible, and Sundays normally are my highest traffic days.

[RedBar]

Good ol' fluctuating traffic!

An average Sunday for my global site is 75% of my weekdays, a low one would be 60%, today with 5 hours to go I'm at 130% courtesy of considerable widget trade interest from Australia.

Likewise our UK hotel site is at 107% v 2024 average however, for some reason, Sundays for the past couple of months have been much higher than usual!

[christianz]

Offtopic but funny (just to brighten up the mood here):

Many of us are regularly receiving e-mails requesting to publish "guest posts", "link insertions" etc. Today I for the first time received one asking for PayPal payment AFTER already making an article complete with images (it was actually relevant to my narrow niche!) and putting links to my site in it.

Next level insanity! And speaks volumes about Google ranking "intelligence".... These things would not be happening if they didn't work at all.

[renatovieira]

Big drop today. Anyone else?

[christianz]

For me the opposite - looks slightly better than previous days, although too early to tell.

[ichthyous]

USA and Canada both fairly low, but it is a holiday in the US. I am noticing a couple of things:

1) More pages showing up as "crawled, not indexed" in Google Search Console and
2) Google is not following my robots.txt and is indexing urls with query strings that I have disallowed. They are showing up as 404 errors

[Samsam1978]

Okay earnings 50% less than this time last year, actually wondering if to look for work now or just remain plodding along, hard to give up something I have spent 15 years on but looks like I am not relevant anymore and my words don't matter just AI do, but I can't put AI on my website as it will lose rank so I keep doing human content I might just need to throw in the towel now..

[christianz]

Okay earnings 50% less than this time last year

October so far is looking very bad in terms of ad revenue. Mostly because Google seems to be siphoning off all the worthwhile traffic (US traffic), but also due to starting of new quarter when advertisers have not yet committed to their campaigns.

[ichthyous]

Okay earnings 50% less than this time last year

I don't have Adsense, but I can tell you that in my product niche people just stopped purchasing this year compared to 2023. They all want large, high quality items for a ludicrously low price now. You would think we are in a major recession, but we aren't. Here in the US the stock market is roaring for two years now, we have the lowest unemployment in a generation and steady wage increases, and people appear to be spending freely on things like restaurants and trips.

The difference between 2024 and 2023? Google. The customers who can afford these items are gone, and it's only the leftovers that you can't do anything with now. The major change is the type of person making it to my site, and that is determined by Google. I just delete the inquiries as they come in...and I have never done that in 20 years in business.

I'm complaining a lot to friends and they say "why not just lower your prices and make sales?". When you produce very high quality items you are not willing to sell them cheaply, a lot of effort and expense goes into making them so I can only drop prices so much...beyond that I will just pass on the sale. I'm fortunate to have other revenue streams not related to physical products, so this year is actually going to be my highest income year ever...but it still irks me that I have a big selection of unqiue items for customers to purchase and nobody can find them anymore.

[edited by: ichthyous at 1:48 pm (utc) on Oct 15, 2024]

[saladtosser]

Whoa just searched for something on Bing, SEVEN HUGE ads at the top with sitelinks and all sorts of widgets! 7? Had to double take! You can really see where the web is going, Bing had a chance to win market share by clearing up the SERPS, but nope, triple down on the ads!

[christianz]

After tiny ray of hope yesterday, today traffic seems to be back to maximum low.

[superclown2]

Bing had a chance to win market share by clearing up the SERPS, but nope, triple down on the ads!

You did well to see that they were ads, the tiny notices they use will be missed by the majority of visitors.

Bing has always been a confused mess but now it's even worse, something I never felt possible. It's hardly relevant to me though, my latest stats show that a measly 1.9% of my business has came from them so far this month. Their billions spent on so-called AI would have been better spent on hiring staff who know the fundamentals of marketing.

Google, in the meanwhile, seems to have abandoned 'long tail' queries. Ask for the benefits of red square widgets and you'll get sites selling widgets, period. The first page will be high spending advertises naturally.

The world needs a proper search engine or two with a priority of actually finding the best answers to queries, rather than advertising companies that are maximising income.