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]

I think we can forget about Bing. The company is behaving exactly like Google. Yesterday it came out that they are completely “stealing” recipes from food bloggers, something that Google is currently testing. And Bing's results are getting worse and worse. It almost seems as if they are adopting Google's strategy. I no longer see any difference between the two.

[christianz]

Bing's results have always been worse than Google's. Especially since HCU. Only big advantage they had (and maybe still have) was much less widgets and more space for (poorly selected) organics.

But generally Bing is full of SEO sites, AI generated sites etc. Sites that look like sites but nobody would actually want to read or use.

[lesseo]

I have 2 competitors who got on the first page by getting spam links. It seems like Google can't stop this no matter what it does. The website has no content but it is on the first page with a very competitive ranking thanks to the backlinks. Disgrace.

[saladtosser]

I had a friends site I built that got hacked, the hacker built 1000's of Chinese spam links to it, wasn't ranking well before but ranked like crazy after that, go figure!

[KaseyM]

God when will the drops stop?

[superclown2]

God when will the drops stop?

When a search engine replaces a certain advertising agency.

[puckparches]

God when will the drops stop?

It feels like they never will. It took me years to build good traffic to my sites, and I was making a decent living. Now, in less than a year, the traffic and earnings have dropped to a fraction of what they used to be. It feels like a never-ending nightmare. Sometimes, I wish I could wake up and see my AdSense earnings back to what they once were. :(

[einserpirelli]

we can hope for better times again...

<snip>

[edited by: not2easy at 11:22 am (utc) on Oct 19, 2024]
[edit reason] Please see Charter [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[Micha]

Do you really think anything will change? The problem with the search is not just based on one man.

[superclown2]

Here in the UK Google seem to have abandoned all attempts to create good, or even acceptable, quality results. This has been worsening particularly over the last month with plain vanilla results only, which ignore attempts to target anything but the most basic search terms. If this is 'AI' at work then we are in the grip of hype hysteria.

Google are destroying a system that has worked well for a couple of decades in favour of an ultra expensive one designed only to make them money rather than perform the function that a search engine was originally expected to do. It will not end well.

In the meanwhile the inadequacy of the legal systems of both the USA and Europe means that Google can continue to make spurious appeals against legal judgements for years to come whilst they continue to exploit their illegal monopoly. Publishers have a choice: sit it out and wait for things to change (provided that 'lobbying' allows this to happen) or find some other way to make a living. I suspect that huge numbers will have little choice but to go the latter route.

Sorry to sound so pessimistic but this is the reality of the situation.

[Micha]

Google is also starting to worsen the results for news. If you visit topic pages in Germany, they are hopelessly outdated. Even Discoveer only displays articles that are at least 4 days old and, in addition, total nonsense (or the usual leading media). This no longer has much to do with “news”.

[RedBar]

Sorry to sound so pessimistic but this is the reality of the situation.

Absolutely and it has been going this way for more than a decade.

Strangely enough in the UK, even though it is not funded by advertising, we have seen an enormous move away from the BBC and mainstream TV programmes / channels and since the 2020 scamdemic this has accelerated.

Many of us have become much more aware / circumspect of what we are being offered and especially so what is being promoted by many governments as to one's own or country's future prosperity.

The exaggerations and, in many cases lies, propagated by these institutions are being treated with the suspicion they rightly deserve.

Much of this disinformation is promoted by G/B/Y/D.

[Micha]

Well, you can't really accuse our public broadcasters (i.e. Germany) of disinformation, maybe sometimes of bias. But the website of the largest news program of the public broadcasting service is ubiquitous and ranks at the top for practically everything. This is extremely annoying because this supremacy is promoted by Google and paid for by us. Information is important, but this dominance is an insurmountable obstacle for us small news publishers.

[christianz]

Very weak traffic.

[ichthyous]

since the 2020 scamdemic this has accelerated

Was it really a "scamdemic", or are you just perhaps a bit misinformed and swallowed too much propaganda? Over 1 million people actually died just in this country alone (USA). I personally know two that died from COVID...as in dead and never coming back. Both of the ones that died were COVID/vax deniers who refused to get vaccinated so they kinda got what they deserved. But they were fed a lot of misinformation in order to get to that point, and they didn't have the intellectual capacity to see that for what it was...propaganda. I personally was in hospital for 8 days after my first go with covid in 2021 before the vax became available. That was after another 8 days at home burning up with relentless 104 degree fevers. I had to come home with an oxygen machine and it very damn well killed me. So please stop going on about the COVID scam...it wasn't a scam, it was a real pandemic and anyone who says otherwise has been brainwashed. Yes, some things could have been done differently, but the world had not seen a pandemic in 100 years so it was a learning process. Continuing to claim (falsely) that it was just a scam is disrespectful to others that did lose loved ones and were impacted more severely than you. Count yourself lucky you didn't end up dead from it.

[breeks]

I had COVID and recovered, and I was back running 5 miles four times a week within a month. I never took the vac, then or now. So, every experience is different. Unlike Google search, where we are all in the same boat. "Sinking"

[engine]

Mods note
Please, let's not get into specifics and beliefs around topics such as Covid.

Let's discuss what you've done for your site optimisation.

[Micha]

Google seems to have corrected something again. Everything has returned to the way it was before the August update, and since Friday, the traffic from messages on my site has completely disappeared. Instead, spam and other nonsense now dominate the results again, and the Discover feed has been transformed into a product recommendation page for Amazon.

[christianz]

Everything has returned to the way it was before the August update

I wish. Traffic and rankings were a lot better before August update.

[saladtosser]

According to twitter DS has quit as the liaison after the sale of SEL, any thoughts on that and how the future looks? I suspect DS knows organics are on the way out so getting out while he can, thoughts?

[RedBar]

This time I've lasted 11 years and 1 week plus finishing on a nice round number.

Enjoy your future endeavours.

[Dooku]

Things are moving at google......in the right direction for us.....not for them :-)
[wheresyoured.at...]

Next year is going to be eventful.

[superclown2]

Google has eliminated the need to search! Type in just about any term connected with my vertical and the organic SERPs of the first page, at least, will be dominated by the same half dozen web sites, all of which, coincidentally, are heavy spenders on ads. Looking for anything specific? Why bother, these same half dozen sites will mention it somewhere, hopefully, and if not you can probably get by without it anyway.

[mosxu]

Outright harassment by zombies for days! No shame!

[Markedd]

@superclown2 It has been almost a month since I haven't been able to use a search engine, not only Google. All I get is somewhat related to what I search. If I search forest, I get Forest Gump. If I search for what is Austria known for in terms of products, I get products that I should buy in Vienna, including Vienna itself (not a joke.). Scrolling through forums for hours, using the search on social media and unfortunately the LLM chat boxes seems to be the only way to get somewhere nowadays. And it's by design, that's the frustrating part.

[superclown2]

It has been almost a month since I haven't been able to use a search engine, not only Google

20 years ago I could find exactly what I wanted, especially from a new upstart called Google. Now I can't. I don't trust so-called 'artificial intelligence' (a crazily expensive way of finding unreliable and possibly dangerous answers) but like millions of others I want a variety of answers to my queries from specialist websites. There is a collective madness in the air.

[Martin Ice Web]

@superclown,

as sad as it is, if you need to find a special item you have to search on amazon for it. Not google or bing. SEs are not the main place to search for special items anymore as their goal is to make as much money as they can while amazons primary goal is to satisfy the customer.

Since 3 days google is in full zombie mode again. Traffic is up but it doesn´t pay out.

[Micha]

By the way: is Google planning to rename ‘News’ to ‘old’, or why isn't anything being updated there anymore?

[gatormark]

Weird. My traffic is fantastic; the best that it’s been since February. However, it’s not being reflected in my revenue. I am assuming that they are simply not showing ads on certain pages. It’s disappointing, because I should be making about 25% more than I am.

[christianz]

Really low traffic today, according to GA.

@gatormark, your revenue is not good relative to traffic most likely because Google allocates lower quality traffic to you (and keep the best to themselves), plus there are huuuge amounts of bot traffic, some of it may get though the filters of whatever reporting analytics you are using.