@ich... yeah, I ended that campaign immediately and will never go back. They violated my daily test budget, and my trust. They just flat out robbed us. Google might have Expertise and Authority but they have zero Trust.

Anyone else still seeing changes. I'm searching noticing different results by the minute.

@samwest

Make sure you take a look at the IP addresses that clicked your ads. I've found some days half of the clicks we are paying for originate from Google owned IP addresses, and I'm not talking googlefiber.com IP addresses either.

I see others indicating changes in purely informational websites, with no ties to products whatsoever. Has Google slipped in another update as well? Of the pure informational websites reporting a boost, they are monetized primarily with Adsense. While I'm not surprised Google will stack the SERPS with those pages that earn Google money, these sites should not be impacted much by Google's product review update. Just curious what else may be going on...

@saladtosser Yes, the new layout is killing us all. One of my most important searches is returning:

Up to four ads
Local search block
--Three organic links - but one site has a sublink too
People also ask
Top stories (2)
-- My website as a single organic link, no pic / no sublink
Images block
--Two organic links
Related searches

Being wedged in that spot between top stories and images results in almost no traffic. It's clear that google aims to devalue organic links by placing them between much more prominent blocks of their own properties...people just skip right over it.

@bushytop, yes we see rubbish traffic. By far one of the worst thursdays for years.
And looking at the serps it seems google is testing how far they can reduce quality till users will leave.

@samwest @BigKat I have said many times that I would gladly give Google a ton of my money if their ads were effective...they aren't. I have tried adwords on and off for more than a decade. The CPC is now ludicrous and reflects the fact that only the largest companies with money to burn on poor ROI campaigns can play in that space. Years ago the spam still existed, but the ads actually did refer some usable traffic. Now...pure garbage that clicks through and out in two seconds 65-70% of the time.

@ichthyous - So... Where IS the decent traffic going if it's not ads and not organic?

My traffic is the worst today than it's been since I got hit with Penguin in 2012. Absolutely dismal. More than 50% down so far today (UK).

Thus far my traffic has been only slightly lower than usual (since the core update) but without the conversions - so, what's happened today?

>>>>So... Where IS the decent traffic going if it's not ads and not organic?<<<

Its staying on Google because there is so much info there you don't need to click off, information wise anyway, buying like most people they probably go straight to e-bay or Amazon to bypass the google spam?

The majority of what I do is PPC management for a large company that owns a lot of companies. So I work on a lot of campaigns in a lot of industries (primarily b2b). There are industries and even niches within industries where AdWords is not effective. There are others where the ROI is mind blowing (think million dollar accounts won). I am not by any means saying it is the answer for most, but I am also here to say that it can be a very worthwhile channel with a positive ROI.

After my quick ad test, I found a nasty side effect. Apparently after reopening and restarting an ad campaign, and just as quickly closing it, I have now slipped several spots. Worst week in history.

I too have given loads of money to Google over the years, but this looks like petty pullout revenge SEO. I would put nothing past Gorgs punitive AI.

Has anyone got any idea what this core updat has done? It feels like a penalty and appears to be getting worse. Impressions still within the norm but very few clicks and forget about conversions. It's brutal this side of Christmas.

Has anyone got any idea what this core updat has done?

The simple answer to that question would be no however I do have some observations relative to my widgets.

On my global .com site a very high percentage of pages rank in the #1-3 spots yet some pages, which were probably the very best in my sector, struggled to be in the top 30 meanwhile some very low quality "competitors' " pages ranked extremely well for some bizarre reason.

This update appears to have rewarded my high quality pages and promoted them to the #2-4 positions.

Obviously this is pleasing for me however it has seemingly not driven any extra traffic so far. I'm going to have a good few hours this weekend to examine what has happened to competitors' sites or whether I am the ONLY beneficiary.

So, short answer no idea, longer answer, page quality boost ?!?!?!

longer answer, page quality boost ?!?!?!

Or page quality penalty?

Or page quality penalty?

Probably equally, I'll know better once I.ve had an in-depth this weekend, my fingers-crossed hope is that apart from a quality page boost is that there is also a thin-page demotion.

My definition for a thin-page is simply the keyword titlebar, the keyword image and a couple of lines of the keyword on-pagedescription ... Fine if that's all one wants however nothing meaty / in-depth.

Looks like this is happening across the board. No traffic or sales for days now. If its an update, let's call it The Grinch update. Keep in mind, there are no updates, it's all just rolling psychopathic AI behavior. The billionaires win again, while the lil serf chiluns get no shoes for Christmas guv'nor.

Don't you just love Google?
Merry Christmas.

The only thing that makes me admire Google at this point is the precision with which they plug the good traffic, not letting up even a drop of it on plebs' sites.

I briefly had some semblance of converting traffic in November for a couple of weeks and it didn't take long for Google to plug it entirely, ENTIRELY, with one update and I'm back to zero. Incredible.

Has anyone got any idea what this core updat has done?

I think the core update is just one of many smaller updates that have followed since. Giving evidence to this is the product review update that will take a suspiciously long time to complete (four weeks - ending at the end of the holiday shopping season/December). Layout changes, including new ad placements, have also impacted organic traffic. Evidence of this is Google's recent addition of paid ads appearing in the local pack which has pushed out more free listings. For example, a local pack that once had three free business listings now has two paid listings and one organic listing located at the bottom. To highlight Google's greed, the paid ads in the local pack are much farther away from me then the free organic listing that appears on the bottom.

For me, both as a consumer and professionally, Google is becoming incredibly useless. In Google's relentless pursuit of money, relevance, diversity (choice) and end user benefits are disappearing and even non-existent for some queries.

Going to run a Fakebook ad for 7 days, says the budget is $14...we'll see about that. It will be the old bait and switch. Big tech is the biggest money scammer on the planet, acting as a bridge troll for what should be an open public resource.

Does anyone else see the "single file" traffic pattern? I never have more than 1 visitor on the site lately. It's as if the AI only allows one visit at a time. Looks like total zombie traffic is back in force.

No, but I have noticed that since this update was announced my USA traffic has been hammered..it starts the day -50%+ and ends the day down about 10-15%, with traffic only really recovering at 7pm or later. Most of the day in the doldrums. Hardly any new inquiries from customer since Thanksgiving weekend. I do think the Omicron factor and all the talk of inflation is scaring the crap out of people. I also lost 6 nice aged links from a high DA site that were up for maybe 15 years. Site redesign...now I get one nofollow link which is useless

my USA traffic has been hammered

I've just checked my last 7 days stats and my USA is within 0.2% of this year's average! Sure, overall traffic is down since it's that time of year for me, post 10th January 2022 will be my real telling time.

Traffic down, no sales. Worst December since 10 years. Good job Google!

@RedBar It's funny, Google has been constantly assaulting my USA traffic since March. The periods where USA traffic is strong are few and short lived. UK traffic has been very strong all year...it's half of my USA traffic over the last three months, which is very odd considering that USA has 6x the population. USA traffic is perpetually suppressed and throttled now.

I really wonder what they did this time. The effect is 100% zombie traffic. Google has got to be raking it in in their push to transfer wealth from the poor to the ultra, ultra, ultra-rich. Worst week in 20 years, under $100. Google will say "you should be happy with our crumbs and Ramen noodles for Christmas" this year. Joy.

@samwest We are all wondering. On the Thanksgiving weekend I had 9 new inquiries in 48 hours...since then about 4 in total. The periods with zero converting anything last weeks now. I've lost 2/3 of my top 10 ranking terms since March and it's not improving at all...one day up, then back down. Many will go out of business from this as everything is accruing to the few very high ranking huge mega corporate sites now.

I am putting all my energy to moving to a new business model of acquiring sales elsewhere and Google search will become a much less frequent source of business. Most of us will need to reorient away from Google permanently.

Yeah traffic has slipped over the last 2 days. Never had a lower Friday in recent memory and 40% off last years Friday at this time. People also asked and other Google widgets are killing us along with traditional media posting articles about every single topic and now ranking for it.

I always related updates to being similar to a bubble sort, but that was back during the Google Dance days. During the sort, total confusion, but once the sort was done, things always seemed to clear up...until the next "update", with less and less "stable SERP time" in between. I thought updates were now "rolling" on a continual basis, or maybe they just said that as cover...can't trust much coming from the plex these days. Kinda miss Matt Cutts the Robo-spokesman. >20 years on and less transparency. Nice. This zombie traffic mess continues. Not a single conversion today, again.

Can we call the period of November / December of armageddon for the ecommerce (Eu market) ? clearly yes ....
On the businesses I follow, I could see 3 small brands literally divide their turnover by 5-8x. This period was always positive in terms of conversion and since the November update, I see a ridiculous conversion rate, unqualified traffic and always more and more ads in the SERP.

@Samwest

Kinda miss Matt Cutts the Robo-spokesman.

From 2019: [youtube.com...]

Thanks for that Nick...
I'm still grasping at straws to figure out what is going on.
One odd issue I found while double-checking my signup forms. I notice the Captcha logs show a sudden appearance of failures starting about 11/13/2021, before that date, zero failures, but after that date, a LOT of failures. It looks like a serious behavioral change in visitors who hit my signup pages. Does anyone else see this?