December 2024 Google Search Observations

[Whitey]

Huge 48 hrs of overall site traffic doubling on only 3 url's, then back to zero. Top slot's since replaced with G overviews. For a moment I got excited. Looks like an AI smash and grab raid to me.

[edited by: not2easy at 11:38 am (utc) on Dec 1, 2024]
[edit reason] New month, new thread [/edit]

[EditorialGuy]

@Dooku: Yes, the live (and interactive) demo is a perfect example of how Plausible Analytics works.

[christianz]

Traffic is very weak. Especially US traffic.

[renatovieira]

Here too. Everything was very slow this morning...

[Micha]

Well, what can I say, unfortunately here too

[RedBar]

I've halted all new widget work on our global bulk B2B site and will watch how the remainder of December pans out, however this looks terminal insofar as our public exposure / availability to the www is concerned since I am now seeing incorrect AI information for some of my exclusive widgets crediting other companies / scam sites scraping us.

Our UK hotel venue site traffic is about where we hoped and barring any last minute disasters is looking pretty good for the month.

My immediate conclusion, well, for a long time now, is that localisation rules, internation B2B has been hung-out to fester!

[ichthyous]

Big drop this morning again, after a decent Saturday. I'm seeing the same pattern since this last update started...low traffic from USA, Canada, Australia, Germany, and other EU countries.

Oddly before it was my articles that got hammered, and today they are normal, but some of the main category pages and home page have been hit.

[Samsam1978]

Is my adsense revenue less than a quater of last year: Yes
Am I bothered: Yes.
I am done with stressing out: Yes.
Does this mean Google makes less money: Yes
Is AI suited to my niche: No
Do I get why people would want to read AI in my niche: No
Are most of my competitors gone? Yes
Am I still seeing SPAM outrank me: Yes

I am too old for this. I am in my 40s.
Whatever happens happens.

[edited by: Samsam1978 at 7:34 pm (utc) on Dec 8, 2024]

[cooler29]

@Samsam1978 : Nice said, same here! :)

[Samsam1978]

@coller29, lets hope they realize they are making less money. I can't see how AI is more profitable, unless it is the CEO's dream to just be an AI machine.

[Micha]

@But Google needs a capable CEO for this, not Sundar. He has already announced that there will be “big” changes in January. Which for him probably means: more AI and small websites will be swept off the web.

[RedBar]

I am too old for this. I am in my 40s.

I started with the www when I was 41, I am now 72, I'm definitely cutting back come January 2025 with web "stuff".

[EditorialGuy]

For me, Google traffic is a "good news, bad news" scenario. It's good because our daily traffic is up substantially over the equivalent days in November, but it's bad because we're still down about 75 percent from the same time last year.

I don't have any realistic hope of getting back to where we were a year or two ago, because organic results now appear to be afterthoughts in Google's SERPs. Users are being trained to read AI mini-essays, "People Also Ask," etc. It's like they're showing up at a university library and being told, "Never mind the books and treatises in the stacks--all you need is this excerpt from the Encyclopedia Britannica."

[RedBar]

but it's bad because we're still down about 75 percent from the same time last year.

We both have specialist evergreen sites dating back to the 90s, just WTF is going on at The Plex?

Why are they seemingly so determined to destroy the sites that built all this genuine and vald information?

I like conspiracy theories these days, most of them seem to be coming true!

[christianz]

just WTF is going on at The Plex?

Why are they seemingly so determined to destroy the sites that built all this genuine and vald information?

Incredible levels of greed, incompetence and lack of moral compass.

[Samsam1978]

indeed, wonder what is in store for Jan 2025

[headspace]

Here's is an interesting observation. I read on here that some webmasters are beginning to block the AI bots from their website. I'm doing the exact opposite and I have already noticed some improvement in my rankings.
By the exact opposite I mean engaging with the AI. I spent 2 1/2 hours some time ago querying, challenging, interrogating and correcting chatGPT about what it knew and understood about the unique service on my website. Where chatGPT was negative or sceptical, I produced evidence that it could verify to turn that around. By the end of the 2 1/2 hour session chatGPT was agreeing with me that my website was a valuable legitimate resource for users looking for my service. This seems to now be
translating into improved rankings on Bing.

Could it be that AI are now evermore integrated into the serps and are performing a gatekeeper role?

If your traffic has crashed and you don't know why, try having an extensive interrogation with the AI. ChatGPT, Gemini, Bard etc. Ask it what it knows about your website,
challenge and more importantly correct any misconceptions it may have. These AI's need to be trained to produce accurate and meaningful information for users, why leave the training up to big tech. I believe webmasters have the opportunity to engage in that training themselves particularly if AI is being integrated into serps.

[christianz]

If my site was online store or business card website for a law firm, I would encourage all kinds of AI for whatever little traffic I could get, because my content would have no value and exchange of my content vs their vague promise of references (traffic) would be positive one for me - nothing to lose.

But my site is full of valuable up-to-date information and AI can ONLY rob me of traffic. It is a non-starter.

Having said that, due to technical reasons, I have so far only blocked them via robots.txt which is almost equivalent to not blocking them at all. I am getting millions of hits from various AI bots/scrapers.

[saladtosser]

It seems Sundar might be signalling a major shift—potentially moving all organic results to a separate, less prominent tab, while fully embracing AI-driven content and ads. Rather than the gradual "boiling the frog" strategy we’ve seen each quarter, this could be a decisive overhaul. If they do go this route, I suspect they could immediately boost revenue by a trillion per quarter by monopolising visibility. However, this approach could lead to gradual degradation over time. Still, I don’t think they’re focused on long-term sustainability—this feels more like a short-term profit grab and hope to destroy the web before anyone else can popup.

[Micha]

However, this approach could lead to gradual degradation over time. Still, I don’t think they’re focused on long-term sustainability—this feels more like a short-term profit grab and hope to destroy the web before anyone else can popup.

I think you're right about that. There's no other way to explain the current situation. I don't think Google is deliberately making its results worse, but rather that it wants to encourage users to stay on the platform. So it wouldn't surprise me if there was a change like the one you describe. I think that in 2025, all websites that rely solely on Google will no longer have a great chance, unless they are based in the EU, where we are currently being spared the AI nonsense and are dealing with other problems that Google is causing us.

Unfortunately, there is simply no real way to diversify traffic. For a blog, it might be easy to use YouTube and other platforms as a strategy, but for news sites or shops, it's a damn difficult environment.

[renatovieira]

HUGE drop this morning...

[christianz]

I don't think Google is deliberately making its results worse, but rather that it wants to encourage users to stay on the platform.

Aha. "Their platform". Which is actually all our content, our work, scraped and spun illegally.

[ichthyous]

For me, Google traffic is a "good news, bad news" scenario. It's good because our daily traffic is up substantially over the equivalent days in November, but it's bad because we're still down about 75 percent from the same time last year.

I don't have any realistic hope of getting back to where we were a year or two ago, because organic results now appear to be afterthoughts in Google's SERPs. Users are being trained to read AI mini-essays, "People Also Ask," etc. It's like they're showing up at a university library and being told, "Never mind the books and treatises in the stacks--all you need is this excerpt from the Encyclopedia Britannica."

Ouch...I will stop complaining about my traffic. My traffic is double what it was one year ago, but I spent a lot of time writing and adding new content in the form of articles. Most of the articles are relatively low traffic, but a few get a ton of search traffic and I haven't been able to find why the disparity between the articles. It's like Google strongly favors some and ignores the others.

The article traffic is nice, but it doesn't convert to sales of products it just gets you visibility. Meanwhile many of the old searches for physical products that I was getting until end of 2023 have dropped off completely. If you don't have an e-commerce enabled site (public pricing options, return policy, product ratings) you will now show up for these types of searches anymore. So, much higher traffic has resulted in lower sales than 2023. I would spend the time to rectify that, but if Google is going to unleash more hell in January again I will spend my time on more productive things.

[Micha]

Aha. "Their platform". Which is actually all our content, our work, scraped and spun illegally.

Google isn't interested in that, for them we are practically just suppliers who work for free. They don't care how we are doing.
By the way, here is the interview with Saint Sundar about what awaits us. Which, by the way, shows that Google regards our content as its own.

[seroundtable.com ]

[headspace]

Interesting interview. I think Sundar acknowledges that G is scraping sites and not rewarding the creators apart from those like reddit, new york times et al. big enough to command a license. But he sort of justified G's actions by stating that there will be productivity tools further along the line spawned by AI which will make businesses much more productive. Its difficult to disagree, but it doesn't provide much comfort for those seeing their sites and livelihood disppear.

[renatovieira]

Another huge drop today. Has anyone else noticed a big impact after the last update?

[Micha]

Yes, the traffic has been decreasing over the last few days. Today there is a lot of traffic from Discover again, but I suspect that this will remain an exception.

[universenet]

Watch Google CEO Sundar Pichai Interview On Search To Profoundly Change In 2025

Sundar is just obsesive with AI and with way how AI will make more money to gogle owners

[morpheus83]

Apparently there is an indexing issue from yesterday -
[status.search.google.com...]

[Dooku]

Incredible levels of greed, incompetence and lack of moral compass

That has just become very dangerous, it seems that people are not going to lie down and take it any more......see what happened to UnitedHealthCare CEO....and other corpo's have become very nervous now.

The latest article from Ed Zitron is about the current state of AI fraud, $70K nVidia cpu's they can not cool enough, running out of training data(already happening/happened), stalling of AI development and investors becoming wise of this useless hype.
At some point the novelty will be gone, there aren't ANY useful products from AI and there won't be any, despite the tech companies screaming in ever more desperation.......yes, 2025 will be very interesting.

[RedBar]

Seemingly an almost total collapse today, 66% of my Googleday gone and traffic at 19% according to Statcounter however Awstats (A) and Webalizer (W) are telling me a completely different story therefore are A and W solely seeing bots etc?

Well. checking my actual logs Statcounter does not seem to be seeing many pages being viewed by a colossal amount.

Am I the only one experiencing this since this discrepancy is massive with some of my sites with one of them showing 20X the traffic that Statcounter does !