What is G doing and why?

They are engaging in dairy farming. Milking the web.

Why? Because its profitable, judging by Google's financial results.

One more day, huge drop today...

Here also - 50 % down since End of November... Today again huge drop... Visibility decreases according to Semrush.

It seems that Google uses an AI to judge which site is helpful and then uses an AI to find similar pages to the nonhelpful pages and penalize them too. The problem is that the result is black and white, while the real world has at least fifty shades of grey.

In addition, Google is not interested in whether the determination of the nonhelpful pages was correct or whether the pages have been changed in the meantime.

There's a KI on the rampage
Don't feel no fear
(KI = AI in German)

One site from 1,5 sistrix points since September to 0,27 today - soon it won't go any deeper. We changed a lot for EAT. The competitors who lost also and do nothing - the result is the same (drop down). Anyone who has lost since September continues to lose...you can turn the page upside down...I can do nothing.

The results get worse with every update. A page not updated since 2013 + no mobile version ranks better and better - #1 for some keywords + sitlinks - no comment...

Since yesterday evening at 6 pm an article (6 weeks old, not unique, rather a side note, therefore very short) has been going off like a suppository. Today at 12 noon until 6 pm the usual normal traffic was back, since 6 pm the same article has been really taking off again on Google. That's completely illogical ...

Looks like another update rolling out. Traffic suddenly lower

Another sudden drop from numerous visitors to zero within one hour on my site. This seems to be the new norm...traffic goes normally until about 10am and then suddenly drops to zero and stays very low for a few hours. Could be that people are out and about but this is a highly exaggerated pattern of steep drops.

In my opinion this has nothing to do with updates anymore, we are simply the lab rats in a constantly self-teaching algorithm that is studying how to best extract all converting traffic and shunt it to google's ads. This is the new normal.

Our pageviews were up 9 percent today (compared to the same day last week) but were still down 44 percent from last year. We've had a couple of days of slight improvement, which isn't saying much even in this era of diminished expectations.

Our editorial travel-planning site's low point for the year is usually in early to mid-December, but that doesn't explain the roughly 50 percent year-over-year drop that I'm seeing right now.

Read through how Google have admitted to manipulating search results to favour their own profits and look at the hardly believable mass of ads and googlespam in the search results and the explanation will become clear.

First 6 positions:
1 Featured snippet
2 People also ask
3 site organic
4 Related searches
5 site organic
6 Related searches

For googler is the quality problem. I'm sure the Googler have a big problem. Very big.

Here's an idea for Google execs. How about remove the remaining few organics completely and just leave the "People also ask" and "Related searches" only?

Yes, you would not be able to find any answers, but that's not really the end of the world - answers are not always necessary.

The main feature would be finding out what other people want to know and are interested in. Plus see cool and relevant ads.

@christianz people also ask and related searches are a good system for instruct the AI (paa) and for click on ads (related search). But this have a price: all the sites below this widgets lost traffic

people also ask and related searches are a good system for instruct the AI (paa) and for click on ads (related search).

Google calls these "refinements" to boost the number of queries, to push users out of organic results and back to the top of the page where they are smacked with many ads to click as you specified. These refinements are an ugly and corrupt b@stardization of the serps if you ask me.

They could also use �related searches� and �people also ask� in the SERP, but at least after the tenth position, otherwise they get too much traffic. Same thing for YouTube videos

They could also use �related searches� and �people also ask� in the SERP, but at least after the tenth position, otherwise they get too much traffic.

The purpose of refinements is for Google to direct users out of organic results, where Google doesn't make any money, and back into a new query/screen full of ads.

Another 25-year low for November. 'Googlespam' just keeps getting worse. Time to tear that deceptive, sneaky, smoke and mirrors ad spam monopoly apart. Sorry for the sugar coating... ;)

Traffic is all over the place...it's tending to be **very** slow the first part of the day and then suddenly catch up the rest of the day. Traffic is far below normal today at 1:30pm though, -31% USA, -21% UK, -40% UAE. I have had certain sections of my site totally demolished since November 10th and no sign of improvement. Google is once again steadily dropping top 3/10 terms day after day...drip, drip, drip...Soon I will be at a 20% loss of all my top terms. This doesn't freak me out, it has happened numerous times...in March the same thing happened and I lost a wide swath of terms, and then in August I started gaining terms rapidly, and now losing them all again. It's clearly cyclical and based on which types of sites google is currently pushing. Business is going to be much slower 1st half of 2024 if this keeps up though...

What I ask myself is, what does Google actually want? I mean, we all have websites from different industries, we all struggle. What exactly is actually working? (and I don't mean AI spam now)

Here today is much better than the last 10 days. I notice a significant increase now in the afternoon, after a very slow morning. Just like good days. This will certainly not continue. Either way, it looks like something is going on... Something has been turned on, or turned off ;-)

What exactly is actually working? (and I don't mean AI spam now)

For us, it's mostly the same pages that have worked for years, albeit with regular updating. New pages take a long time to rise to the top, if they ever do.

My websites have been my primary source of income for years. I even quit my day job a long time ago to focus on them, relying on AdSense revenue to sustain myself. However, I always knew that someday Google might reduce my website traffic and AdSense earnings. Unfortunately, that day has arrived. I don�t blame Google�though I feel frustrated and disheartened by the situation�I understand they're maximizing their profits.

Reflecting on this, I regret not investing more time in developing my mobile app. Instead, I dedicated most of my efforts to creating website content. Had I balanced this with app development, I might not have been so reliant on Google search results today

What I ask myself is, what does Google actually want?

The obvious - money.

In January, Google went from displaying two ads then to three ads. By February there were four ads above the fold, and it's been that way ever since. Refinements, such as the people also ask and people search for refinement boxes, climbed up the page and now hover right below a single organic result. Still, this was not enough to fill Google's coffers which is why we saw a spat of updates that resulted in somewhat accurate organic results being replaced by Google ranking nonsensical pages. The changes Google made do not to improve the user experience (actually made the UX horrendously bad), but drive all eyeballs and clicks to ads.

I'll admit G seem more desperate than ever and for me it started back in October 2022. But throughout this year they have been making so many changes. Even threatening to delete inactive Youtube channels and sacking a bunch of staff. Either they are in panic mode and are spending more than expected and having to cut costs or are just not reaching yearly targets. Probably both.

They are forever getting court cases and law suits against them and I'll be surprised they even know what they are doing half the time. After reading about their AI screwups. Though I'll admit I wish this nightmare would end as there is nothing more that I want right now but to build a website or two and get them to success. But alas another -30% drop for me.

@RubicCubed The decision makers at Google are pretty stupid if they think that companies are booking advertising on Google because their ranking is dropping. Mainly because advertising itself is no longer bringing in as much as it did a few months ago and the more websites give up, the less advertising G can play out overall. In the long term, search will not be able to compensate for this unless it only plays ads and no longer shows organic hits. Initially this may work because companies think they need to invest now, but in the long run it will weaken.

And as far as I know, Google doesn't have a product that brings in anywhere near as much, and AI search could yet prove to be a disaster, because AI may be the hot #*$! at the moment, but it's still a long way from working properly, and hardly any publishers are going to stand by and watch Google shamelessly help themselves to content. And G shouldn't forget the user factor either. Google may be the market leader, but there are alternatives, and if you don't find anything else, people will use these alternatives more and more, and Android won't change that much.

Google may be the market leader, but there are alternatives, and if you don't find anything else, people will use these alternatives more and more

What alternatives? (Seriously. I'm not being snide.) Google has no real competitors in general search. In theory, Google could be swept aside by something that's truly new and better, but its existing competitors seem happy to copy Google and live on the crumbs that Google leaves behind.

@EditorialGuy Replace the preselected search engine, which is Google, with another one, such as Bing, and 90% of people won�t notice the change because they still find what they�re looking for. Don�t believe me? Try it on someone�s phone you know. I did it secretly and no one noticed anything. I replaced Google with Bing for a few days, then back to Google. No one asked me what had happened.

A thought... If G no longer values long text and picture content. Is it because they wan�t to keep people at search-page looking for information, so they can earn more in ads? Shorter content cannot cover a subject and then people have to search more to learn.

Since the HCU-Update in sptember - has anyone managed to stop the major downward trend or achieve growth again by making changes to their website?

I looked at a lot of websites in my area at Sistrix, almost all of them have lost visibility and the trend has been downwards since the HCU update. So far, no website has been able to break the trend when it has been affected.

In contrast to all updates in recent years, after 2-3 months at the latest there were many pages that managed to rise again. This hardly seems to be the case this time.

@BlueEyes82 No site I see has recovered stably. Even my site has had a continuous up and down. Now it is at its lowest, however, starting from December 15th. Other sites, on the other hand, have not even obtained a slight increase in these months, but are in free fall. Other sites initially had a strong increase, then they collapsed. The defects of all these sites? Apparently none.

I am currently looking at two English-language technology sites. They are quite well made and both have the same trend in terms of traffic and keywords. Both have added a very brief summary at the top of the article with the solutions to follow to solve a problem, below there is the complete and detailed guide with the steps to follow. I notice for both sites a good stability with the keywords and traffic until November 31, then from December 1 a strong drop in keywords and visits. For me, Google is completely useless and is no longer able to recognize good content. Their AI has failed big time.