Great take on why we are here [youtu.be...]

All of the competitors in my niche are losing ground. Some of them in big chunks. I am probably losing ground at a slower rate than almost every website in my niche. I am assuming that we are losing ground to Reddit, Quora, and big corporate sites that are not niche websites.

One of the things that bothers me is that searchers are not being pushed to the industry experts.

A Reddit user has an interesting theory that Google wants to use the updates only to push website operators into paid advertising.
[reddit.com...]

I'm finding that localisation is having a huge impact on the results I'm seeing here in London. Also the search terms I've targeted in the past are now far less effective; Google is showing pages for terms that, yes, the pages are suitable for, but for search terms I have never even dreamt of, and using words that don't appear on the site or backlinks pointing to the site.

Perhaps traditional SEO really is finished. Or then again. perhaps my targeting has been too narrow.

Incidentally, anyone have ideas on how Trump's victory will affect Google going forward? I can't see him trying to hurt an American company which could be bad news for those of us on this side of the pond.

Lol, Semrush is on fire today. When everyone is busy in US elections today , the Goog engineers decided to push some kind of update today.

what a great video and totally agree with the guy. I've been working online for 30 years and the internet now is utter rubbish - how can something that was so good go so bad with one company running it, its insane

A Reddit user has an interesting theory that Google wants to use the updates only to push website operators into paid advertising.

.....that is not really a surprise is it, seeing as what is happening in real time.

Also, makes that publishers meeting at googles headquarters last week, of which one webmasterworld member also attended, look really pathetic.
Google telling the attendees preposterous gangster lies: "you know it's not true, I know it's not true, you know that I know that you know it's not true.....but what you gonna do about it hey!"

I can see the G-employees still rolling around on the ground laughing their asses off in the google office........

I can see the G-employees still rolling around on the ground laughing their asses off in the google office........

I think that sums it up
I repeat myself: I think the meeting was just an event anyway to have an argument in the ongoing court case: “Look, we're listening, we're talking to the small website operators”.
I can't imagine that anyone really went there with the expectation that anything would change.

The only question that remains unanswered for me is: Why is Google doing this? Do they no longer want to stay in business and are therefore milking the cow as best they can, or have they completely abandoned reality in the meantime?

By the way: Is another update in progress? I see even more movement than in the last few days.

"I can see the G-employees still rolling around on the ground laughing their asses off in the Google office."

They won't be laughing when they are replaced with Ai

Another 30% traffic drop over here and still falling. Definitely one of their so-called 'updates'. They are doing so much unnecessary damage. Even my go-to takeout delivery site has increased their charges for deliveries. Could be co-incidental but the timing is spot on! Since these ''updates'' are hitting sites both big and small is it any wonder sites that are used for deliveries, be it food or actual products are increasing their charges? All because of what exactly?...

So whilst one company leaves people struggling to pay bills and, god forbid homeless. Further damaging the economy. I'm completely baffled by all this. Now Trump is leading again, I really don't have much hope in anything good coming in the future..

Our editorial travel-planning site's average position in Google Search Console plummeted yesterday to the lowest level I'd ever seen. I'm not sure about the significance of that number, but having it drop so far can't be a positive sign.

Google traffic and overall traffic are down week over week, too. (Then again, our traffic always takes a dive in November and December. That's been true for 20+ years.)

The orange monkey will probably prevent Google from being split up. That explains why Google's CEO was so effusive in his congratulations to Trump earlier on X

[reuters.com ]

We do not discuss politics. Please see TOS.

@not2easy Not even when it comes to antitrust proceedings? Then sorry, please delete the post.

Delete this post too if need be. But I just, this past hour, did a bit of researching and came across a few interesting articles. Apparently back in 2020 Trump announced an anti trust claim against Google. So I wouldn't read everything as gospel in him potentially preventing the Google split. It's an option but since he, originally, opened a claim against the company it seems unlikely.

Plus, according to other news G were forcing its searches into locations to voting for Harris, rather than Trump. It would seem that they are fans of the democratic party. This was posted on X during this latest election. Of course Google tried to escape this claim by saying it was a location within Texas but with the 2020 claim, is this entirely true? Seems rather suspicious.

Regardless its time for G to move on. Their search is terrible for both its users and publishers. I am also tired, as with many others, of trying to build a business just for it to loose traffic randomly for no real reason. We need change!

@EditorialGuy how AP took a nose dive 4 months back according to GSC but traffic remained exactly the same, i think its a bug maybe!

The traffic drops continue and today seems to be worse than yesterday. Well behind my daily average. Traffic drops appear on Analytics, Mediavine and even my site stats, so for me at least, this does not seem to be a bug with GSC. It's just another annoying G ''update''.

With regards to my last post, more specifically, the fact G used their search to direct people towards voting stations for the democratic party. It just goes to show that all of these updates and destruction of businesses and livelihoods is nothing more than a game to them. Manipulation to suit themselves. Proof is right there.

Since my last post has not been removed yet, if at all. I will post links to what I'm referring to as I noticed I had not done so yet. It was 2am when I posted and it was also from a friend's phone.

Trump launches antitrust case against Google in 2020: [politico.com ]
Google Directing users to voting for Harris: [mashable.com ]

I struggle to understand what are they selling to us ? The traffic makes no sense if you do a test and offer almost free products the buyers they send still not want to buy?

Namecheap has increased their domain renewal fees a lot. Today if it is 17+ for dot com next year it could be 30+. I am predicting fees will jump a lot to cover their losses.

If you own several dozen domain then it's getting expensive to renew them every year. And I am sure no one will buy those domains in future because no body would want to create a dead website in the presence of pirates (AI)

Previously i would buy domains with extensions (net, org, co, com, biz) to make sure no one make a copy of my website with just different extension. Now its not feasible to own several extensions of same domain when main website is dying.

Yesterday was weird. I went to bed with an hour remaining in the reporting day, with a certain revenue and number of clicks. I woke up with LESS revenue and 60 more ad clicks. I haven't seen visible clawbacks like that in a long time.

Namecheap has increased their domain renewal fees a lot.

Prices of .com are increasing years over years, because the central registry obtained the authorization to do so...

You can try Cloudflare for your domains, they sell them without margin, so technically no one is cheaper (beside promotional discounts).

I went to bed with an hour remaining in the reporting day, with a certain revenue and number of clicks. I woke up with LESS revenue and 60 more ad clicks. I haven't seen visible clawbacks like that in a long time.

Big mistake, this is the reason I never sleep, you never know what can happen when you are asleep...

I still think there is a problem with the reporting, I am still missing my first 3 days of November, and I also saw odd things, like impressions disappearing for no reason. I am displaying ads only to particular visitors, and even if I might miss a bot or two, I know this is not possible that hours of impressions turn to 0.

I have been dropping domains as they come up for renewal. Cutting corners when possible to save some $ as my traffic slowly dissolves away. :)

Big mistake, this is the reason I never sleep, you never know what can happen when you are asleep...

LOL

There's a specific search (for research) i've been doing weekly for years, and this week the UI is awful, cluttered with a greyed out URL, a favicon, and the "people also ask."
It's now harder to see the links than it was, and, importantly, Google fails to find the specific it used to pick up.
No wonder people are reporting traffic declines!

Note, this search I undertake is not packed with ads as it's a bit too specific. I used to be able to find stuff in an instant of completing the search, but now, i've got to struggle to find the link I need.

Google needs to go back to basics if it wants to show it's serious about traffic.

[edited by: engine at 2:45 pm (utc) on Nov 8, 2024]

This is why I support Mojeek, and tell as much people as I can. We should all support Mojeek !

Giant drop on November 6th. Massive. Weakest, worst traffic in at least a year.

There's a specific search (for research) i've been doing weekly for years, and this week the UI is awful, cluttered with a greyed out URL, a favicon, and the "people also ask."

I was searching Google for something unrelated to my own topics a couple of days ago. The first six organic results were YouTube videos.

Google seems to be abandoning the open Web. Given the size of the Web (and how much information is on the Web), mightn't there be an opportunity for a new search engine that focused on guiding searchers to useful Web sites?

mightn't there be an opportunity for a new search engine that focused on guiding searchers to useful Web sites?

No need of "new", we have Mojeek already ;-)

HUGE drop today!