Google wants to promote sellers that sell products using Google Ads

I have been posting this and about localisation for at least 10 maybe 12 years,probably 2014 when I went fully html5.

It was inevitable, G has globalised classified advertising, G ads have replaced many older forms of adverting at lower cost for many types of business but not all by a long, long way.

For the overwhelming majority the www has matured and, in general, people are comfortable with it, they know where they're going together with their preferences. Unless one has an exclusive new product do not expect anything revolutionary to happen, it is very unlikely to.

However in my experience, 33rd year this year Chris, if one is seriously researching "whatever" it is still a fantastic resource. For sure there is a load of spam plus AI garbage out there but for the seriously-minded quality is still there, just don't expect millions of visitors or a quick route to millions of Dollars.

For many now, and definitely me, our sites are specialised niches just like low volume printed book runs used to be.

@RedBar - that was well-said, low-volume niche publications we are.

I'm noticing a nice traffic & conversion boost since yesterday, despite having 50% less pages indexed compared to two weeks ago.
I'm beyond believing any google trend will stick for longer than two weeks.

Whoa, wtf is happening?

Yesterday my global site's traffic was 33%, today after half my Googleday it's at 10% ... Yep, 10% with none, as in zero, from China, and I always have genuine trade visitors from there.

Not yet another update?

The weekend was pretty good; the shop is slowly recovering. The news site, however, is on a roll: rankings have improved so much that we have topic dominance for our most important keywords. Discover has been stable for days (never thought I'd see the day) and today is looking very strong as well. Since Google rolled out "Preferred Sources" worldwide, I’ve been seeing more and more clicks in Matomo on the button we slapped onto the page. I wonder if that triggered the current situation or is at least playing into it.

And the best part: we currently have some peace and quiet from bot armies.

Too bad 90% of the Internet are not news sites or shops. I am seeing the worst SERPs ever, the worst rankings, the worst traffic and the most bot traffic ever and it only gets worse.

Too bad 90% of the Internet are not news sites or shops.

And precisely why when anyone searches for anything that GBDY all know from their data it is what the majority are seaching for therefore those are the results seen. If this is not what someone is searching for then be more refined with the search term.

christianz ... You are probably doing nothing wrong however GBDY go with the mass simplistic searches and answers, we, as SEOers, have to be more accurate and definitive with OUR answers. Going for the big popular keywords hasn't worked for probably 15 years, that's one of the many reasons so many gave up in 2015/16.

If you personally want to see alternative results then use a VPN, it opens up a completely different world ... Well, in my industry it does:-)

@christianz That’s true, but we mustn’t forget that the situation here in Germany is somewhat different from that in the US, for example. Google doesn’t exert as much pressure here yet, and media consumption habits are different.

Seems I can access the website again ! with all the bots from everywhere sometimes my IP is blocked from Taiwan


Anyway, that said, I see the same, and 3 weeks ago been scrapped like never by bots (Germany) and China (Lanzhou). The quantity of bots is massive, and even running ads on facebook I receive message that are also bots...

This week situation is big sink around the 11th...

If at least bots could pay and place orders :D

@Micha have you also set up your google publisher page?

@morpheus83 I didn't set it up, but Google created a profile like that for my site.

So, I guess there is always something up at Gs, but in the last 72 hours, there is def something weird. 18 May was the best sales day we ever had, and just after that, everything is completly wasted (?). Nope, thats not "user-bahavior", thats just G making things up.

@chris I can confirm that, by the way, it’s the same here. Both the shop and the news page are getting next to no traffic today.

Sunday lowest day of the month very little African / Asian traffic.

Tuesday highest day of the month, traffic like 2-3 years ago, highest country was Egypt.

Yeah G, completely normal behaviour!