I am willing to bet money it will harm genuine publishers more than the infinite cloud of disposable spam sites.

However, I can't blame them for acting and doing something. Because situation with spam is dire.

[edited by: not2easy at 5:58 pm (utc) on Oct 4, 2023]
[edit reason] splice cleanup [/edit]

I also think that we are going to see more frequent updates from Google now as it tries to deal with AI generated content. The rest of us are just along for the ride. Google is at cross purposes by trying to compete on the AI front, which only hastens the decline of its traditional search model. Google will try to manage the process so that it gains more from AI than it loses from search, but that will be very difficult.

I posted that a few days ago and it's looking spot on...another update. The 3rd back to back. They can call it spam update, helpful content or potato pancake update...but Google has a huge challenge in front of it and we are all going to feel it as our sites surge and drop.

My site was down for ten days with update #2, and now surging again since yesterday with update #3.

Let's hope that this time it really hits spam and not more nonsense is flushed to the top of Google.

I'm sorry, but after the revelations the DOJ released, I simply can't trust Google anymore. That includes these updates which always erode traffic quality while conveniently helping Google to attain positive revenue growth each quarter.

Wow been a year already since my site was slain by this exact same update last year. 'Spam' they call it. I can assure you none of my articles are or were spam. So my hopes in Google actually being able to target AI sites. Which are spam is not very high. Instead we will just get a repeat of crappy sites at the top. Good at the bottom. Also, several weeks. Great. The only thing that is consistent in search these days is how frequent these updates are. How completely pointless they are to anyone outside of Google. Oh and that they take so long to roll out. *Sigh*

How about at least reducing the results on hacked websites with random letter subdomains containing AI generated and auto translated text on every possible topic under the sun?

To be honest I dislike and distrust Google. But I would be even more disappointed in them if they did not sort out the AI. Yes, its new, so it will likely take time but if they ignore it then it will only inflict more trouble. They know they have enough on their plate right now.

From a personal perspective I'm looking forward to update respite. You know a few months worth. I was, and to an extent, still am relying on this revenue that my site was enjoying for my own upkeep. Mortgages. That I'm struggling to pay. Hence my quickfire and digs at G. I'm having trouble finding solid income from anywhere right now. Not fun.

This AI implementation couldn't have come at a worse, in truth. Sucks.

To be honest I dislike and distrust Google

You are hardly alone in that respect :-)

A cynic could claim that an 'update' provides an excuse to give poor organic results for a while, whilst profiting from it. I couldn't possibly comment of course.

To be honest I dislike and distrust Google

Is there even one person left who trusts Google?

I wouldn't be surprised if the spam update comes now, just to quickly deliver better results and give a better picture in the court case, as the complaints from us webmasters have become too loud by now.

The spam update started last night..

[sorry, I thought I was in the other thread!]

We got a core update going on as well now...

[webmasterworld.com...]

[edited by: not2easy at 11:44 am (utc) on Oct 6, 2023]
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2 continuous updates within ca. 30 days... Core updates Spam updates useful content updates .....something is very odd with google...
Not that I care so much about my websites, status is ok, but that monsoon of updates makes you wonder ...
In the meanwhile brickenbrack advisor websites, istagram, youtube videos spamming the hell out of results.
It looks like someone was hit hardly (money wise) from the geopolitical situation and sanctions ......

I already have a huge problem getting mail delivered. Even my partners are finding our emails in the SPAM folder. There is no rhyme or reason for it. Our SPF rules limit who can send email as our domain and no-one else can send via our mail server. We only use email for client support and not on any black lists.

G is probably the most prolific spammer. But who checks that?

Let's just write off this month. I think they have a lot of work to do to fix this core update that has made Google less accurate and it is still displaying even more spammy and robotic websites.

Let's just write off this month. I think they have a lot of work to do to fix this core update....[snip].

Trouble is, the impact of a Google update can last much longer than the current month.

I think what we are witnessing here is a Google Crash:

- Google Search Results not serving up the most relevant content
- Google Indexing stopped working
- GA4 is a disaster

Interesting that stock market crashes historically have occurred in October.

This reminds me of another scenario. Many years ago, Quark XPress owned the desktop publishing / design market. They didn't listen to their customers, didn't update their product to benefit their customers and had abysmal support. One day, Adobe came up with InDesign (there is a whole story of how that happened) and everyone, literally everyone jumped ship. Quark, a giant in this space, disappeared in an unbelievably short time. So that can and has happened.

Quark, a giant in this space, disappeared in an unbelievably short time. So that can and has happened.

That's true, but Quark's market consisted of professionals in a niche industry. Google's market is the mass market, and it doesn't even have a credible competitor on the horizon.

IMO, if Google Search ever disappears, it will be the result of something altogether new, not because users decide they want a different traditional search engine.

@Editorial Guy - You are right, this one could take a long time but I think the 'crash' is so obvious, I expect it to be balanced out by this month end or they might do another update next month to fix it. Over the last couple of decades this happened a couple of times am sure you might even remember here and there.

If there is no change by the end of the month at all, we might have to start thinking plan B, but for now, let's play the wait-and-see approach.

Food for thought: It's now only three days short of two weeks since the October Core Update began. (And the update is supposed to take "up to two weeks" to complete.)

Maybe what we're seeing now is what we're going to get?

@Juniya

In my case, plan B would be to produce really bad content. In my area, apart from the authority pages, pages have come to the top, some of which have not been updated for years and are visually and functionally in 2015. Additionally, there is no EAT or expertise on these sites, as this was not a factor years ago.

I've been marketing online since 2007, but these latest updates have been by far the worst. Yes, we also came under fire at Panda, but we knew we could really do better in the future. But this time I'm really missing the big levers...

We are seeing exactly the same thing happening now as was in he 2022 Spam update, only more severe.

Long ranking, quality expert pages scraped and inserted on scraper sites and hacked domains.

Our pages dropped out of the index completely. Happened on four of our very old domains.

Seen lots of people comment on the same now, even in the Google Search Forums. Seems a genuine oversight / bug but with Google they could just see this as collateral damage? Probably.

Will test rewriting some of these pages and try and get them re-crawled but that is possibly wishful thinking.

@blueeyes82

Add to that the parasite SEO sites in a number of niches and this is becoming really hard. I have been doign this for 22 years and quite frankly it is now harder than ever for all the wrong reasons.

Google core update was completed after 13 days and 23 hours.

Incident began at 2023-10-05 09:00 and ended at 2023-10-19 08:00 (all times are US/Pacific).
[status.search.google.com...]