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]

[saladtosser]

Based on Googles AI overviews I assume that if I can create an AI that trains off all YouTube video/data then created a YouTube competitor, that generated AI videos on the fly that perfectly answered any and all questions more efficiently and became the most popular video platform Google world be okay with this, or nah?

[Micha]

There is chaos in the Serps. So when Google wants to sort out spam, you currently tend to achieve the opposite. Even more websites in different languages in the German search results, even more financial junk dominating the news and so close to Christmas, many fake shops are also very visible again. My news site is no longer ranked under its main topic, as stock tickers are ranked above me.

Incidentally, the shop has been dead since yesterday, with a whopping 0 orders despite high visitor numbers (99% of which are probably spam).

Speaking of spam: Do dubious services now see a good business opportunity because Google is weeding out small publishers? I am currently receiving many offers for guest articles, voucher services, etc.

[universenet]

Spam update is because holiday time.
All need be covered by ads from google,
all other websites in Google search are just enemies and need be removed

[gatormark]

I am very curious to know what is causing this volatility within the SERP.

I have had very little movement in my rankings. I wish my rankings were higher, but they have been stable for about 10 months.

In the past, I have had significant movement, but it’s usually once a year and the last time was around February or March of last year.

I wonder is it industry specific?

[RedBar]

As expected global site traffic is very slow today and will be so until 2nd Jan at the earliest.

Our UK hotel venue is performing as in previous years reducing all month and all being well should bounce back after Xmas. Considering G's recent shenanigans I don't think that any version of normality may return until w/c 6th Jan for my sites if at all.

[gatormark]

@RedBar

I refer to this period as the dead zone. For me, starting this weekend, it will be the worst two weeks of the year. Of course, 35% of my traffic comes from students. That combined with the fact that advertisers won’t really pick back up their advertising until the beginning of January.

[ichthyous]

It's hard to gauge how much is seasonal and how much is the effect of all of these updates all the time. USA started out -60% this morning, so that is definitely abnormal even for the week before Christmas. I do see that the overall effect is to have zero (yes, zero) holiday sales this year. I define "holiday sales" as smaller, lower priced items that people are purchasing as gift items starting in october even. For me these kinds of sales are not essential, even a hassle at times since a lot of people want custom made items in a rush before the holidays...but they do add up if enough people order.

[jchiff]

Again, nothing we haven't sussed out for ourselves, but an interesting read from The Register:

[theregister.com...]

www.theregister.com Perplexity, not Google, is now the best search engine Seek and ye shall find

[not2easy]

That was posted here two days ago: [webmasterworld.com...]

[renatovieira]

Another update? WTF!

[Ingall]

These spam updates are actually authority updates. Currently, only pages with high domain authority are displayed. Content, language, user signals, relevance do not matter. These spam updates encourage spam in the SERPS because topic relevance no longer plays a role for Google. The winners are big brands, parasite pages and expired domains with high DA that are filled with spam. Spam updates always caused more spam in the search results.

This is how you can rank on Google:
- Buy an expired domain with a very high domain authority.
- Now you can publish any rubbish on any topic on this website.
- The keyword does not even have to be included.
- Language does not matter, if the DA is right, then you can also publish the content for the German market in Chinese.
You will rank for everything!

[cooler29]

@Ingall :at this point, what You said is pretty correct. I mean it works on that way for past 13-14 months, from Sep / 2023.

[sk7411]

Spam update is doing exactly what is supposed to do , rank the spam higher .

[RedBar]

Gordon Bennett!

"Gordon Bennett" is an English-language idiomatic phrase used to express surprise, contempt, outrage, disgust, frustration or exasperation.

I'm at 66% of my Googleday with traffic at 50% of my lowest-ever day and we've not even got into Xmas or New Year weeks.

These are not simply low numbers, they are utterly pointless having a website numbers.

[cooler29]

@sk7411 "Spam update is doing exactly what is supposed to do , rank the spam higher .

Exactly! :) Good one! :)
"

[ichthyous]

I'm at 66% of my Googleday with traffic at 50% of my lowest-ever day and we've not even got into Xmas or New Year weeks.

These are not simply low numbers, they are utterly pointless having a website numbers.

Traffic was unusually low this entire week. I see two main drops in my own traffic: ~Nov. 13th, and again right after Thanksgiving ~Nov. 27th. Traffic is not recovering from these drops at all, but seems to be stabilizing around this lower lever for now.

This week is already holiday period so I wouldn't sweat the lower traffic, .but I had zero smaller holiday gift sales this year, and not even any inquiries for that. I have noticed that the period from Halloween to Xmas has been bringing fewer and fewer sales for years now, with January typically pulling in larger, higher budget sales. Not sure why that is...but this year seems to be the nail in the coffin for holiday traffic and sales.

Silver lining: I did have numerous corporate sales inquiries, which tend to be much higher value projects in general. I cannot really complain about the number of good inquiries which came in from corporate clients in Nov-Dec.

[RedBar]

This week is already holiday period so I wouldn't sweat the lower traffic

I had global traffic 50% of it WAS non-western, my Chinese, Indian etc clients mostly do not celebrate Xmas, that traffic has also disappeared.

I'm not sweating at all however I am making 25 year comparisons and these are never seen before levels of traffic ... I was going to make a decision come 31st December but have been persuaded to wait until Friday 10th January and see what happens that week before I hit my delete button!

[christianz]

I had global traffic 50% of it WAS non-western, my Chinese, Indian etc clients mostly do not celebrate Xmas, that traffic has also disappeared.

I'm not sweating at all however I am making 25 year comparisons and these are never seen before levels of traffic

No no. Nothing to do with coming Christmas. It is just Google introducing record amounts of spam during the Spam update.

[Micha]

The traffic was a bit higher again yesterday and today. However, the ranking of my news page is going crazy. And if I'm seeing it right, the update is going as usual: big brands win, spam increases and small publishers get even more problems.

About the shop: it remains dead. Although the number of visitors (and the ranking) is okay, there are still no sales.

[ichthyous]

I had global traffic 50% of it WAS non-western, my Chinese, Indian etc clients mostly do not celebrate Xmas, that traffic has also disappeared.

But Chinese don't use Google search anyway so how is lower Chinese traffic related to this? Indian traffic is quite a bit lower since these updates. I get no benefit from traffic from either country...just spam, infringements and wasted bandwidth so I don't mind.

I'm not sweating at all however I am making 25 year comparisons and these are never seen before levels of traffic ... I was going to make a decision come 31st December but have been persuaded to wait until Friday 10th January and see what happens that week before I hit my delete button!

Why delete your 25 year old site just because of Google's BS? You never know what's around the corner...perhaps some new source of business will materialize

[EditorialGuy]

I am making 25 year comparisons and these are never seen before levels of traffic ... I was going to make a decision come 31st December but have been persuaded to wait until Friday 10th January and see what happens that week before I hit my delete button!

My main editorial travel-planning site has been around since 2001, and I've never seen things this bad, either. I see several reasons for our traffic and revenue decline after a strong bounceback from the pandemic in 2022:

1) More Web competitors, including opportunistic keyword-driven sites that aren't very good but manage to do well in Google (maybe because of things like exact-match domains, which have had a resurgence in my topic areas).

2) More competition from video (especially YouTube), not necessarily for the things I cover but for how users spend their time on the Internet.

3) AI overviews, people also ask, and other distractions in Google's SERP layouts. (Google Search may have started out as a way to help users find things on the Web, but that approach is long gone).

Still, as bad as things are, I can see our site prospering to at least a modest degree if Google's increasingly bad search results were to improve. For example, if Google actually made use of the "entities" that it supposedly has been stuffing into its database, people like us who actually have subject expertise might enjoy a significant improvement in rankings. I've been writing about our overarching topic online in print and online since the 1980s, and I've been covering our most popular subtopics on the Web since the late 1990s. It shouldn't be that hard for Google to figure out that maybe, just maybe, someone who's been writing bylined articles and books on X, Y, or Z for several decades might know more about X. Y, or Z than someone with no track record on the topic.

[RedBar]

But Chinese don't use Google search anyway so how is lower Chinese traffic related to this?

Oh but they do in my industry since they use VPNs I know the vast majority of traders also do. I've been using a VPN there for years likewise with several other countries plus my .cn sites have linked directly to my .com for 20 years now.

I've had production facilities in India since 1970, we supply the domestic market as well as export, likewise my .in sites link to the .com.

Why delete your 25 year old site just because of Google's BS?

If G's not going to drive me any traffic then what's the point? I'm toying with the idea of using our .asia sites more. If G really is going full-on localisation and "demoting" international B2B sites like mine then it could possibly be a way forward. Let there be no doubt that sites like mine will survive however just as in pre-www days we shall continue just below the public surface-view where people will begin to wonder again "just who made that and where did it come from?"

This is the inevitability of removing any relevant sites.

[RedBar]

Blimey, today's looking worse than yesterday! Now the really interesting thing about this for me is the comparison between the various counter programmes I have. The easy one Statcounter shows this dramatic fall however it usually never compares to Awstats, Webalizer and my logs BUT this time they have ALL recorded the same fall in traffic which I find perplexing.

Why do I find it perplexing? Quite simply we are told that maybe as much as 90% of our traffic is bots and garbage of all sorts and that Statcounter filters out this crap therefore, if this were to be true, how come they all showed the same massive reduction for the same 24 hour period?

Did all the BS traffic switch itself off at the same time or is this 90% garbage traffic number a fictitious number created by someone, somewhere as a complete guess?

This comparison anomally comes even more to light when comparing Statcounter v Awstats for a UK focussed site i.e. our hotel venue. Statcounter shows 98.8% UK Page Views whereas Awstats claims 27.2% page views from the USA. All my sites are hosted in the UK.

Can anyone give a possible coherent explanation?

Thanks

[webdev29]

I'm impressed by Google's ability to leverage commercial periods to update their search engine. As we can see, in the e-commerce sector, the repercussions are significant: loss of traffic, low click-through rates, drastically reduced conversions, etc.

I work for several well-known e-commerce brands in the European market, and the only way to maintain sales at the expected level is to use Google Ads/Google Shopping. This was also the case during the Black Friday period.

Google's monopolistic share of the internet is too substantial to ignore the direction in which the search engine is heading, from directory to aggregator and marketplace. I personally hope that SearchGPT and other competitors will encourage Google to return to an economically responsible business model.

[ichthyous]

@RedBar I don't think any of these apps have the ability to filter out bot traffic that well and awstats doesn't even try as far as I know. If you are seeing all of them in agreement and a huge drop across the board then either 1) there's a network outage, 2) your server was down, 3) you have a big problem in that your search traffic has actually dropped that much all at once. It could all bounce back tomorrow...my traffic shot up mid day yesterday from a much lower level as if someone flipped a switch and stayed at that higher level all day. Today my traffic is more robust than any time this week.

Meanwhile, since November 26th my UAE traffic has fallen off a cliff...going lower and lower without pause. Today it is -67%. This happened to me in the past with Australia...I was getting a ridiculous amount of traffic and sales from Australia and it all disappeared in a matter of days and never returned to those previous levels. I doubt that your USA traffic would drop by that much and never recover through.

[RedBar]

Three good suggestions ichthyous however 1 and 2 did not happen since local UK sites I have did not suffer at all, solely the global-specific ones. Is #3 the G-induced spam update, if so why after 3 decades? I have seen falls before with spam updates but never one as drastic as this.

This traffic reduction is continuing into today and the local sites are not being affected. This is probably the worst week of the year for my global sites to have this happen since so many in the global industry are now on holiday until 6th January therefore I may have to wait at least two whole weeks before I may see if it's "just gone quiet" or if it's permanent.

My feeling is that this is permanent and is an attempted by G to purge as much as they possibly can sites it deems as superfluous to its classified ads agenda. G actually knows that there are many 10X thousands of businesses like mine that will never advertise with them since it would never drive the "correct" type of traffic therefore are they quietly saying "We accept that we can't do business together however we also choose the right whether or not to feature you for free at all !"

[Samsam1978]

50% down from last year in everyway. 16 year old website. No AI. This latest update increased my rankings a bit but not to pre-AI overviews. Still 50% down and my google ad revenue down the same. Wonder how they are now making my lost money.

[universenet]

Google in purpose removing indexed web pages what exist in google search, even many times google does not allow to view number of indexed pages in google search
Manipulation is on daily base
So if any website has low visits compare to normal time that is one of big reason
Web pages just no exist in google search

[gatormark]

@EditorialGuy

My main editorial travel-planning site has been around since 2001, and I've never seen things this bad, either.

I believe travel websites are dead. I have one, I still keep it up, but the traffic is almost not existent. I’m a travel fanatic and I don’t even go to websites anymore. I keep the website up as a business write off because I like to travel and I will write articles about the places I visit. Now, it’s all about YouTube videos and channels.

As far as planning. Once you start traveling, you know what to do and how to plan.

Travel websites are typewriters in a computer world.

[saladtosser]

Hey @gatormark, how’s YouTube treating you these days? I’ve been at it for five years now—I’m at 40k subs and pulling in about 3k views a day, which nets me around $130 per month. At this pace, I’d need another hundred years on YouTube to earn a living!

Each video takes a ton of work. I pushed myself from doing about 10 hours of editing to two solid weeks for a 16-minute video of something I was filming the progress off for a year. (these videos go viral in my niche) It showed signs of going viral at first—got me 100 new subs, 1,000 likes, and lots of comments—but then it all died down after a week. So far, I’ve only made $22 off it, which I could’ve earned stocking shelves for an hour. Honestly, sometimes I wish I’d never started!

The biggest problem is anyone who's new or doesn't have 1000's of very loyal views can be destroyed by a handful of competitors clicking on the video, watching it for a few seconds and clicking off, seems way to easy to sabotage other channels! Personally I think unless you got in YouTube early its a mostly dead end grind for 99.9% of anyone wanting to start up today, just my opinion based on my experience!

I dont do any of that, Like my Videio, subscribe and become a member e begging because I HATE watching that as a viewer, maybe thats where im going wrong!

[gatormark]

The “Dead Zone” starts today!

[gatormark]

@saladtosser

I only have websites. I don’t do business on YouTube.

[RedBar]

The “Dead Zone” starts today!

I know I've asked this before however just how accurate is Statcounter v Analog, Awstats and Webalizer?

Quite simply at 12 hours into my Googleday Statcounter was reporting my hotel site at -94% and my main global site at -93% meanwhile several UK sites were at -100% in other words zero PVs.

Checking my server logs did show trafffic down but nothing like the wipe-out Statcounter was displaying.

4+ hours later Statcounter is showing some traffic but nothing like I would have "expected".

Is everything banjaxed at the moment?

[ichthyous]

My traffic snapped back yesterday and appears to be higher today as well (so far). Perhaps this spam update is nearing completion, or perhaps it's so close to Christmas that there is no longer any benefit in suppressing everyone's traffic as the shopping has already been done...happy holidays to all!

@saladtosser I have been considering YT for ages, but the amount of labor involved in producing the videos doesn't produce much of a return. I keep them up solely for customers to refer to if needed. It's a catch-22...if your videos look cheap it works against you more than helps.

[gatormark]

@ichthyous

@saladtosser I have been considering YT for ages, but the amount of labor involved in producing the videos doesn't produce much of a return.

Ditto!

[saladtosser]

Hey @gatormark, sorry buddy—I read your post wrong; that’s dyslexia for you, lol!

@ichthyous, I totally agree: the returns are terrible. I got into YouTube five years ago because I saw where Google was headed and hoped it would be my way out. I’ve poured endless hours into making videos, but I’m nowhere near earning enough for it to be a backup plan for whatever’s coming in 2025. It was worth a shot, though, and my videos are evergreen—they rank #1 on Google/YouTube searches—so they still bring in around $100 a month. Unfortunately, that doesn’t even cover a tenth of my rent, haha!

If I lived in India or somewhere with a lower cost of living, maybe it would be enough. But in a Western country, everything is stacked against you as a content creator—you just can’t keep up with the cost of surviving here, was good for a long time but the party is almost over!

You know what really gets my goat, though? Those AI overviews that appear above my #1 ranking positions keep using my photos—but their citation links don’t even point to my site, they point to my competitors! And I’m the one actually ranking #1 for that search term. They’ve even taken my images—complete with my big watermark and logo—yet I get zero credit.

If they at least put my site in the citation list when using my images, I might be okay with it. But using my watermarked images and not even mentioning me? That sucks!

[EditorialGuy]

I believe travel websites are dead.

I think that's more true of travel-narrative sites ("my trip") than travel-planning ("your trip") sites. People who used to follow blogs are probably more likely to be following YouTube channels these days. But for practical advice, a Web page is more efficient than a video and is more likely to be kept up to date. Also, demographics come into play: Upscale, older travelers with advanced degrees almost certainly rely more on the written word than the average 20-year-old does, for example. The good news is that the Internet serves a lot more people than it did a generation ago, so niche audiences (whether defined by age, income, information preferences, etc.) can be larger than they were when I got started on the Web in 1996.

Side note: I can't resist sharing something that I read in the Travel Channel's guidelines for production companies a number of years back. The guidelines included the statement, "Our viewers aren't interested in travel, they're interested in watching television." That's another way of saying that the audience for, say, The Travel Channel or a newspaper travel section back in the day was a lot different from the audience for a guidebook. The same rule of thumb applies today, and not just in the travel field. (E.g., most people who read reviews of Ferraris and Lamborghinis in CAR AND DRIVER aren't in the market for supercars, but they do enjoy reading about them.)

[ichthyous]

You know what really gets my goat, though? Those AI overviews that appear above my #1 ranking positions keep using my photos—but their citation links don’t even point to my site, they point to my competitors! And I’m the one actually ranking #1 for that search term. They’ve even taken my images—complete with my big watermark and logo—yet I get zero credit.

I have to check that...I have seen the large image blocks in AI overviews being somewhat less common lately...now it's mostly just text results. I just checked and my images do link to my own site. I then ran a search for famous people related to my field for one specific genre. My name and a blurb about my work now appears in the AI overview list of people related to this field, but the section of my website that relates to this niche is completely gone from the search results. My name on the list links to an article I wrote about the topic. I searched until page 20 or so and my website is gone.

[gatormark]

@EditorialGuy

There is some merit to what you are saying and I’m not familiar with your niche. However, my travel niche is getting smaller and smaller (It died almost overnight (COVID)). Similar to the people who read newspapers. The amount of people who read newspapers is dwindling daily. Sure, text-centric newspaper still exist, but it’s a dying industry.

I’m sure there are regional differences in how people approach things like reading. However, in the USA, generally speaking, the young generation does not “read.”

Now, I own a website for people who write. Writers are also readers, so those article driven writing communities are still doing OK.

[Samsam1978]

Interestingly, a senior director from the ad tech industry shared with me a document. It was a report on Google and search and it looks like sponsored links on the main Google page are increasing their ad revenue very well. This person also said that, given Google’s current strategy he thinks that someone else may be the biggest search engine in 5 years, mainly due to the changing relationship with webmasters and going for AI strategy, he thought the whole of the business is at risk, and people don't want AI they want to connect with people. I don't really know what to think after that message he sent me.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on these shifts and where you think this is all headed for us.

[christianz]

Update on Spam Update:

Every day since it started I see steep nosedive in number of rankings according to Ahrefs. Traffic is at lowest point also. Spam update was more painful than December update and December update was more painful than November update, which was painful to begin with.

Regarding "people don't read" and "people prefer video" argument:

Yes, I agree. But let's not forget that web is far more than text for reading. It is application platform - you can build anything on top of it. In my niche video can't compete with interactive websites.

Of course, Google doesn't care, they will push YT whenever and wherever possible or impossible (even when it makes no sense).

This person also said that, given Google’s current strategy he thinks that someone else may be the biggest search engine in 5 years, mainly due to the changing relationship with webmasters and going for AI strategy, he thought the whole of the business is at risk, and people don't want AI they want to connect with people.

I don't know what Google's long term strategy in web search is. It looks like slow motion train wreck.

[EditorialGuy]

people don't want AI they want to connect with people

I think that's a valid point. Look at the popular channels on YouTube. They aren't just about information, they're about information presented by real people with distinctive personalities. There's a big difference between, say, the funny and edgy Scottish guy who reviews phones, etc. on his "Techspurt" channel and the same info provided by a video with no humans in the frame and a computer-generated narrator's voice.

[gatormark]

people don't want AI they want to connect with people

I think both can be true. It really depends on your goal. Sometimes you want quick answers to a simple question and other times you want relationships and in-depth information.

I don’t think AI is bad. I think the current results, because AI is new, are bad. The information is not always accurate. I think that will be sorted out eventually.

What’s weird to me is that Google knows who the long term industry leaders are. They should focus on that information for AI.

[Micha]

Google has become so predictable: It's Tuesday and, as expected, traffic from Discover is on the rise again. Otherwise, rankings have improved somewhat, but traffic has been rather poor the last few days. But since it's Christmas, I'll ignore Google's crap for a few days.

Dear all, enjoy the holiday season and try to get the Google nonsense out of your head for a few days. I wish you a great time.

[Treud]

Traffic is #*$!, but stable since the end of the last update. Received some emails from customers the first days and no more after.
Many KW are lost in oblivion (the ones that rank), but long-tail ones are slowly climbing (they are coming from far away)

I'm selling different types of products, Google chose my niche a few years ago, and now it seems they want to push another one! So I'll have to work on it!

[Samsam1978]

On the companies house website in the UK we can see what companies earn. I looked at 2023: Reddit in the UK made 28 million revenue and reported that as there gross profit, they spent 19 million on marketing and 6 million on research and development in 2023. Does this mean they probably spent 19 million on display advertising with Google? What do you think this means?

[universenet]

Does this mean they probably spent 19 million on display advertising with Google? What do you think this means?

They doing some other market bussiness possible,
and I think that is not pay to google because google paid to them even for training AI
Big companies are always in some other market too
This is reinvestment that they do not pay taxes much

[Samsam1978]

Profit was only 300k out of 26 million pound gross profit.

[universenet]

Profit was only 300k out of 26 million pound gross profit.

So, it is reinvestment for company grow and pay less taxes

[gatormark]

It is not coincidence that Reddit content started to show up higher in Google search results after this $60 million deal.

[reddit.com...]