Google’s November 2023 Core update is live

Reactions, Feedback & Comments regarding Google’s November 2023 Core Update

Google has announced that it has started rolling out a Core update in November 2023. It may take a week or two to fully roll out. Along with it Google will start rolling out another update “Google’s November Review Update 2023“, it has also announced.

As soon as the word got out, Reactions started coming in. And also, as time passed, people started seeing fluctuations visually. Some of the replies from WebmastersWorld and X.

It just gets worse and worse for us, too. The “reviews” updates hit us hard, and while we didn’t see any major gains or losses in the most recent Helpful Content Update, the core updates (including this one) have not been kind.

I wouldn’t feel entitled to complain if we were just losing rankings and traffic for random articles or minor subtopics, but it’s galling to see us losing ground for our most popular topic, where we’ve created a body of useful, regularly updated informational content over the last 2+ decades.

I get the feeling that subject expertise and experience (which have seemed to benefit us in the past) are getting less attention in the most recent updates. Contrary to what Google’s guidelines might suggest, the proof of the pudding is no longer in the E-E-A-Ting.

Running some analysis, I see that the bing/yahoo/duckduckgo traffic to my highly buyer-intent articles has skyrocketed % wise…Because Google has been sending fewer and fewer people.

My informative/not as buyer-intent focused articles have been fluctuating around +/- 10% since this particular update started.

Still hit hard after the HCU and October update, but at least November isn’t another -30% or something. The annihilation of buyer-intent articles feels rough, though. On some of them it’s 20-25% coming from other search engines. It used to be like 5%.

If you go by GA4, don’t. It is glitched right now and shows less than actual visits.

Update about my situation:

Main site was in freefall on Saturday and Sunday after reaching very high levels on Friday. It is still at around all time high levels but a lot lower than Friday. Maybe today will be better, but I don’t count on it.

Secondary sites continue to be reliably dead. Although my smallest one did show some improvement on Sunday.

What happened on Saturday/Sunday looks like partial reversal of October Core. Lots of “niche sites” and “made for affiliate” crud showed some vital signs again, unfortunately, as I was hoping those hit will stay hit forever.

There was huge collateral damage to September/October updates, including my own smaller sites, so clearly there is no magic bullet to sort out low value sites. Google is chasing their tail, although they did seem to get something sort-of-right for a fleeting moment.

Some of the replies from BlackHatWorld.

More spam and old Reddit articles are ranking high in my main niche. Curiously enough, a site in the gaming niche that happens to have a random page in the niche I’m in is ranking above mine.

The content on it is absolute garbage, it reads as though it’s been written after a few Jack and cokes.

Lost ~25 to 30% in October, got about half of that back so far. Let’s see how the rest of it goes.

And some of the replies from our own forum.

Google is just punishing niche based sites. They are not targeting any big ones which specializes in nothing but have articles of everything. If you are a site in a niche which you probably are then it’s time to go global field wise. Otherwise, you won’t be able to compete.

Forbes and other big sites. Just have many pages which are one sentence or two sentence article. Yet, they are able to go and win against the most prominent info pages of any specific niche. I remember G said that G don’t value domain but pages. Then how come this is happening?

A friend of mine have a eCommerce site which has many sub-domains. Suddenly, one of them is ranking high. I mean it is at the top now. And the sub-domain is not even completely built it just for support purposes for customers.

I mean seeing Quora and Reddit for queries which aren’t even right for the query in the SERP’s. It’s an absolute mess. G is simply giving wrong answers now.

I can confirm this with our own ecommerce site’s fluctuations. They are not sub-domains, yes not all of them but some.

Google is very selective. It’s like they are giving ranks to the small sites which queries posses no value of money.

This month is supposed to be the earning month. But instead it’s quite the opposite.

December 2022 Google’s Helpful Content Update

We looked into the public reactions in public forums and social media. It looks like Google this time has managed to get a mixed reaction.

As soon as Google Search Liaison twitted about the update reactions from all across the world started coming in. Although people were talking about some unknown update since the last few days.

We looked into the public reactions in public forums and social media. It looks like Google this time has managed to get a mixed reaction. There are a number of people those who are so not happy about this. Their rankings have fallen off a cliff. But there is also a handful of people who are saying that their rankings have improved since the update started rolling out.

The majority of the sites which have taken a hit badly are small sites specially blogs or smaller affiliate sites. But there are some big sites as well. Have a look at these tweets.

dec2022-google-update-seomotionz-1
dec2022-google-update-seomotionz-2

Here are some replies from Webmaster World.

My guess is this update will have the opposite effect of its name, being hurtful to pages with unique content, products, services, etc. But I’m sure it does help shape the reality of webmasters when they use names like “helpful” or cute & cuddly creatures like a Panda and so on. It’s been years since Google released an update that actually helped us, but judging by Google’s profits the updates sure helped them.

I am seeing a huge hit today…my USA traffic is down 54% this morning. Ex-USA seems to be steady. Previously I have seen al EN language traffic very rocky, surging one day, dropping the next…but USA has been affected the most. I have lost a considerable number of top 10 ranking terms today alone, both mobile and desktop.

It is not helpfull Content update, it is: HELP google get FULL Control update

Some of the replies from our own forum’s google update discussion.

Organic traffic has dropped of a cliff.

We are just holding onto direct and referral traffic.

Back then gaming niche was fine.

But now it’s not. Weekend traffic has fallen to 50%. And even week day traffic is down by a lot.

Some of the replies in Black Hat World.

Interesting, my site that got hit on September 13th (I’ve lost track of which update was named what, have to go by dates) seems to be doing a bit better today. I did some improvements to it, not as much as I wanted to, still some thin content on there but I’ve lost motivation for now. Let’s see what happens in the coming days. Anything is a bonus, I’ve kinda written it off.

I was wondering why my one of my non-English PAA sites, who’s had a nice growth over the last month, suddenly took a nose-dive yesterday…I didn’t know there had been an update, but that explains it. And here I was sitting and preparing to hit 50k sessions next week so I could apply for Mediavine

We have noticed that many are also facing an indexing issue in Google. Our suggestion is that submit your pages to social channels and different content sharing sites (social bookmarking sites, directory submission sites, blog submission sites) as well. They may speed up the process of indexing.

Another Google Search & Ranking Update on August 15?!

Another Google Ranking & Search update on August 15?! Or, it was just another glitch? Last week I reported that there were sightings on a possible update. And webmasters around the world too observed the fluctuations in Google SERP’s. But later it was informed from Google that it was merely a glitch from their end.

Now, again on this weekend many keyword rankings were going upside down. Some webmasters were reporting off the chart sales and revenue. While some were saying that they are back to zombie like traffic.

Many were also saying that it is probably a roll back to the May’s Core update. Although I personally doubted it very much. But we’re unable to ignore the signs that it was completely unlike. Some were also saying a roll back to the June’s.

Anyway, all the tools and sensors were also going crazy over this.

Google-Updates-August152020

Now, after going crazy on August 15 and August 16. Some were reporting that since the later hours of August 16, SERP’s have cooled off and going back to normal.

Webmasters are now doubtful on what it was that actually happened. It surely looked like a roll back experiment which was a eventually stopped.

Here are some posts from the WebmastersWorld Forum.

It looks like they rolled out an update or broke something on 15th and rolled it back later. This triggered the senors on both days.

Yesterday the 6 hour window of incredible conversions was not associated with any serp change…just the usual low traffic that suddenly started converting like mad….it was “anti-zombie” traffic. Lol

Now I am having high traffic on two of my sites in the same niche. Zero conversion. It looks like the zombies are back…

Despite a 300% increase in conversions yesterday (Saturday), we had far less conversions then the prior Saturday. On the other hand, our Amazon sales skyrocketed. I had to open the shop yesterday so we could pack/ship all the orders. I’m heading in to work today to do some administrative work to free me up for Monday since sales from Amazon are still on fire.

Some of the replies from Black Hat World.

Google just did an update on or around a hour ago. Looks like they reverted the changes made very early in the morning.

Everything is reverted back. I assume they are checking on some new algo and this version was quite fine tuned. This time, I didn’t see any stupid links ranking in top 10. All quality websites were ranked in top 10.

The rankings are being reverted back to what they were a day before yesterday.

Replies from our own forum.

In internet and telecom niche. Its been blazing good. Noticeable increase in conversions. Usually a site which receives around 2k visits on Sunday’s are still struggling to get to the limit. But ad revenue and sales are off the charts. While usually its 2-5 sales on holidays and weekends. Its now 25 or even 30.

Adwords is also working fine. ROI is really good. I haven’t seen something like this for a long time.

Big Search Update is going on – August 2020

Since the last 48 hours more or less most webmasters around the world has come to this conclusion that an update indeed is going on and it is a big one.

For the last couple of days there has been a lot of debates regarding an update. Some said about a bug in Google’s end, others were discussing about any experiment in the SERP’s taking place.

Nobody knew for sure. But since the last 48 hours more or less most webmasters around the world has come to this conclusion that an update indeed is going on and it is a big one.

Here are some of the replies given in the WebmastersWorld forum.

Yes a significant drop in traffic since Monday (ecommerce FR, Brand website)

My websites as well as many of my clients dropped so much that I though many of them are about to disappear completely from the SERP. This is the First time I’m experiencing such huge drops. Google is definitely ruining our lives for good with their crappy updates

This morning, zero traffic. From lunch until now a very heavy traffic. Best pageview in such a short time since the creation of my website. Suddenly everything disappeared… Today G is crazy…

Here are some replies from the Black Hat World forum.

Yeah but this does not seem like a regular weekly or monthly ones. Seems like big core update again if i am not wrong

Yes, definitely. Just saw one of my authority sites lost lots of rankings. Something big is coming or going on.

HUGE update for my sites, a lot of Pinterst pins ranking above my homepage. Pages that were sitting in the top 3 for years now in the 60s+

Some of the replies from our own forum.

Google is performing some kind of experiment. It’s not an update. Because if rankings fell or disappear, they came back after a few hours.

Earth shattering movements in many niches. I don’t think now that it is an experiment or a bug. Some keyword’s across many niches just popped at the top from nowhere and some has gone to nothing.

For those who are facing issues indexing new article through GSC and automatically. It’s my personal opinion that get your page exposed somehow. Maybe its via social media channels or through social bookmarking sites. The method doesn’t matter here.