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]

[Dooku]

@Redbar, Statcounter does a pretty decent job of displaying actual traffic from human visitors. They weed out the 0.5 second hits, most bot's and script/hack attempts.
I regularly compare the raw server Nginx log files of my websites to the cloudflare and the Statcounter statistics. And sofar I can say is that at least 95% of "traffic" that is there in the raw server log files but NOT displayed in Statcounter is just junk, containing anything from semrush bots, hacking attempts, scrapers...etc..etc...

[EditorialGuy]

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

It's hard to tell, because this is always our worst time of year. For more than two decades, we've invariably had a low point in early to mid-December or thereabouts, so it's no surprise that the graph is currently heading downward despite our gains from the November Core Update. (This annual low point is always followed by a jump after Christmas or New Year's, with the curve heading upward until its peak in mid- or late summer.)

On the brighter side, even with our week-over-week erosion of Google traffic in recent days, we're ahead of where we were a month ago before the November core update began. That's unprecedented for this time of year. Unfortunately, our gains from the update are a drop in the bucket compared to our losses in Google traffic over the last two years.

[RedBar]

@Dooku

hacking attempts

It never ceases to amaze me the sheer volume of Wordpress hacking attempts that generate 404s. Do any of these hacks actually work, I haven't a clue since I don't use it ?

[ichthyous]

Another huge drop today.

Very big drop today...search is -30% at 1pm. Seems across the board...all locations and content type affected.

Has anyone else noticed a big impact after the last update?

Traffic has been slowly recovering and even going higher in the last week. I am up 2% on search. But if I check the last two weeks -13%, and last 28 days -7%. So there was definitely a quite large negative impact but it seems to have been fading...except for days like today. What is interesting is that the only real customer inquiries I have gotten were clustered from 11/19-11/21. After than, almost nothing. No holiday boost, no last minute orders and no inquiries.

[Micha]

The ranking is now a complete mess. My most important keywords (normally in 1st or 2nd place) are now somewhere in 90th place. Without the Discover traffic, the page would be dead today. Today in the top spots: stock market news...

Sales in the shop have plummeted today, which is no wonder given the statistics, because, amazingly, the Google visitor today is 2). Other shop owners are reporting a similar picture to me today.
And this in the run-up to Christmas, which puts even more livelihoods at risk.

[headspace]

@Dooku the first two lines are inappropriate comment. Nothing condones that behaviour.

[cooler29]

@Micha: "The ranking is now a complete mess. My most important keywords (normally in 1st or 2nd place) are now somewhere in 90th place. Without the Discover traffic, the page would be dead today. Today in the top spots: stock market news...

Sales in the shop have plummeted today, which is no wonder given the statistics, because, amazingly, the Google visitor today is 2). Other shop owners are reporting a similar picture to me today.
And this in the run-up to Christmas, which puts even more livelihoods at risk."


SAme here, in different niches :)

I done experiment, maybe it will be usable to somebody, maybe have some connection to thing we are talking here: drop in rankings and many Ai, or bad, or just spam results....

Useed ChatGPT, Bing Copilot and one very popular app that has more than 1.000.000 downloads with user rating almost 5 to talk about small few tourist places around a world where I have been and know (when I travel I stay for month or two at least, and literally I know and picture every hotel, bar, restaurant etc, eve have a lot friends on such places)

Anycase I asked AI to give me plan trip, and answers were very generally. And with a lot of false information. Whan I say "this is not true, you are ling or You don't know, why You just don't say that You don't know answer" I was getting something like:

"I apologize for the confusion. I'm programmed to be helpful and informative, but sometimes I don't always have all the information or I make mistakes. In this case, I made an error in suggesting a spa that doesn't seem to exist. I apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. I'll strive to be more careful in the future."

What is most impressive to me, is that a lot of people really uses those AI things.

So maybe fellow webmasters like everybody here need to change mindset: maybe we just need to lower quality of content, get back 25 years back, maybe today users don't want to read, maybe the just trust any answer provided by Ai as "authority"....

Just my 2 cents I wanted to share with other :)

[EditorialGuy]

So maybe fellow webmasters like everybody here need to change mindset: maybe we just need to lower quality of content, get back 25 years back, maybe today users don't want to read, maybe the just trust any answer provided by Ai as "authority"....

What surprises me about AI Overviews and the like are how old-school they are. They're simple blocks of text and are a lot less engaging than, say, a Web page with photos and an easy-to-read layout with white space and the like. An AI Overview is like a post from CompuServe or GEnie back in the 1980s. If today's users don't like to read, why is Google shoving blocks of plain text down their throats?

[cooler29]

@EditorialGuy "What surprises me about AI Overviews and the like are how old-school they are. They're simple blocks of text and are a lot less engaging than, say, a Web page with photos and an easy-to-read layout with white space and the like. An AI Overview is like a post from CompuServe or GEnie back in the 1980s. If today's users don't like to read, why is Google shoving blocks of plain text down their throats?"


Lol, that is what I mean on... :)I mean You hit the point...

That is why I drop idea that we maybe need to just got back where we been 25 years ago...

Ok, You say Compuserve, that is let say 40 years back, but maybe, just maybe, new generations need to "grow up" just like we did... :)

Again this is just my silly explanation for this, since I still don't have a better one :)

[Mark_A]

How much will SEO for example for Google become obsolete once AI becomes the norm. How much will it now become "AIO" (AI Optimisation) and possibly bear no resemblance to the SEO people have been doing up till now.

Could your current and future SEO plans become simply obsolete / a waste of time and money, because of the arrival of AI?

[Dooku]

What surprises me about AI Overviews and the like are how old-school they are. They're simple blocks of text and are a lot less engaging

Is it possible that google is just catering to the current attention span of people with those short AI blocks? I have been reading a lot of articles this past year about the "rewired brain" syndrome because of the short snippets info digestion due to phone use of people.
Obviously this is caused by the usual social media platforms like FB, TickTock...etc...etc..
These studies all show the same problem, people just can not finish a book any more, or even read longer articles.

What surprised me the most was the fact this is not just a problem with youth/young people but also people who are well into their 40's (and older!) Maybe google is seeing that engagement with websites is becoming less and less, even when taking into account the obvious widgets crap they fill page one with. We on this forum probably are NOT the average internet user and are not suffering from the attention span problem of a goldfish.

So those blocks of text might seem "old school" to us, but I guess for many people they might be a blessing "ooh look! there is my short and to the point answer! Yippeeee!"

[RedBar]

My global site has been out there since 1993, it is packed with relevant and unique specialist widget information and images however yesterday, Tuesday 10th December 2024, it saw its lowest-ever page views to the extent that last Xmas Day saw double the amount of traffic.

I was going to have a rant however it's utterly pointless since absolutely nothing will change.

[renatovieira]

Here we are on the third day of a huge drop. SERPs are better than ever, but there are no more users browsing the internet.

[waynne]

I feel your pain @redbar

I still have good solid rankings but traffic is negligible and still dropping like a stone. AI snippets and PAA snippets are showing my content now.

I have taken the decision to block ALL ai bots and scrapers. The end result of this for me is that I am not investing any time or money in updating content or creating new content.

It was bad enough when the plagiarists and scrapers took my content, spun it, THEN GOT RANKED FOR IT, but the scrapers and plagiarists have been replaced with Googles Ai Answers and now none of us are getting any reward, credit or traffic for our efforts.

I moved on to other business areas a while back and am trying to totally De-Google my life (not easy).

[mosxu]

What about the story about willow quantum chip?
How much does it cost? As the current business model is killing us!

[ichthyous]

I have taken the decision to block ALL ai bots and scrapers.

You may decide to block them, but have they decided not to scrape you? They will still keep coming as long as your content is public. They are flagrantly ignoring Robots.txt. You can also check your content and opt out at [haveibeentrained.com...] Not sure if the content will actually be removed from datasets though.

The number of Ai snippits and also asked content, in addition to so many forms of image blocks has badly broken up the organic results now. If you ask most people though they think it's great to have the answer presented to them so quickly, rather than having to click from site to site. This is what the new Ai boosted Google looks like, and soon it will be 100% Ai snippits. Our links will only be footnotes to the AI overviews...ever tried to click on one of those tiny link icons. It doesn't actually link out...

[ichthyous]

How much will SEO for example for Google become obsolete once AI becomes the norm. How much will it now become "AIO" (AI Optimisation) and possibly bear no resemblance to the SEO people have been doing up till now.

Could your current and future SEO plans become simply obsolete / a waste of time and money, because of the arrival of AI?

Yes, and that isn't necessarily a bad thing. The underlying problem is that websites creating original content are going to vanish in larger and larger numbers if they can't make a living, so the dataset is going to dry up. Then what? Ai will kill off the geese laying the golden eggs...

[Mark_A]

I am partly just moaning because we chose recently to start an SEO push which might just become obsolete because of AI.

[makintocheplus]

My traffic is up +10% from Bing and +5% from Google last 30 days.

[NeapTide]

My domains of main earning sites are up for renewal. Probably this is the last time i am renewing them. If for 1 more year i see no improvements then bye bye google and bye bye users.

[breeks]

"My domains of main earning sites are up for renewal. Probably this is the last time i am renewing them. If for 1 more year i see no improvements then bye bye google and bye bye users."

Same here. I just renewed my main domain in November. It looks like it will be the last time. I made some good $ over the years, even made the UPS club a few times. Now, I struggle to meet the minimum payment.

[gatormark]

My small websites are dead or dying. My large traffic websites are doing well, FINALLY! I think this is the goal of Google, to kill the small websites that can't generate traffic on their own. Traffic is king!

[renatovieira]

After days of huge drops, this morning I noticed a significant improvement. Has anyone else noticed?

[Mark_A]

I expect end of year holidays to reduce traffic levels for our B2B organic and PPC listings from about now.
I can see some evidence of this already.

I suppose for B2C websites this could be a busy period, for B2B it could be the opposite.

[gatormark]

We’ll see a year-end traffic drop starting tomorrow, the 13th. Then, we will see a larger drop Friday the 20th. It’s the same every year.

[Mark_A]

@gatormark are you also B2B?

[Mark_A]

Will SEO be of much use in the coming days of artificial intelligence?

Yes, SEO will remain valuable even as artificial intelligence (AI) continues to advance. However, its role will evolve due to AI-driven changes in how search engines process and rank content. Here’s how SEO will adapt:

1. Content Quality and Relevance
AI-powered search engines like Google’s RankBrain and Bard prioritize high-quality, contextually relevant content. This means SEO will focus more on creating content that answers specific user intents rather than relying solely on keywords.

2. Natural Language Processing (NLP)
Search engines increasingly use NLP to understand search queries more contextually. Optimizing for semantic search, voice search, and conversational queries will be critical.

3. Personalization and User Experience (UX)
AI enhances personalization, delivering results based on user preferences, search history, and behavior. SEO strategies will need to focus on providing a seamless user experience, fast-loading websites, and mobile-friendliness.

4. Visual and Voice Search Optimization
With AI-driven image and voice recognition becoming more popular, SEO will expand into optimizing multimedia content, including alt text for images and structured data for voice search compatibility.

5. Data-Driven Insights
AI tools can process large datasets, providing deeper insights into search trends, customer behavior, and competitor strategies. SEO professionals will use these tools to create data-backed strategies.

6. Automation and AI Tools for SEO
Many repetitive SEO tasks like keyword research, content optimization, and link-building can be automated with AI-powered tools, making SEO more efficient and scalable.

7. AI-Generated Content and Content Moderation
While AI-generated content is rising, search engines value originality and quality. SEO will involve moderating and enhancing AI-generated content to ensure it meets search engine standards.

Conclusion:
SEO isn’t becoming obsolete; it’s transforming. AI will reward businesses that embrace a user-centric, content-driven, and technically optimized approach. Staying updated with AI-driven changes will be crucial for SEO success.

[no, I didn't write that myself :) ]

[Micha]

SEO is already obsolete, it doesn't matter what you do on your website, Google just randomly selects the ranking anyway and if you're not a big company, you're screwed.

[gatormark]

@Mark_A

No, I’m B2C.

[ichthyous]

After days of huge drops, this morning I noticed a significant improvement. Has anyone else noticed?

No, it's actually worse than at any point this week, but the day is young. Google managed to completely destroy the last quarter of 2024 in terms of traffic and sales with their constant 'updates', and that's after an already awful Q1, Q2, and Q3 for sales of physical product.

This entire year people also had totally unrealistic price expectations so sales didn't happen even when there were inquiries. I don't know whether that is a result of Google sending the leftovers who had lower budgets, or whether this is a major consumer shift this year...it was not the case in 2023 so much. With such a strong economy in the US people should not have been so budget conscious...in my niche people on a tight budget just don't go shopping for what I sell, it's a discretionary purchase (a splurge).