January 2025 Google Search Observations

[engine]

The end of 2024 was one of the busiest for Google's changes and updates. No doubt it'll be settling to a particular status in 2025.

Let's keep an eye on traffic and conversions, and the impact of the AI-based responses in SERPs.

Previous thread December 2024 Google Search Observations [webmasterworld.com]

[renatovieira]

Yesterday I had a huge traffic spike. This morning the opposite, a very huge drop. It's not a bug, it's an update.

[RedBar]

Monday came in at 77% with a lot of single page views, so far today after 12 hours I'm at 45% with a noticeable increase in non-western traffic, not back to normal however looking better ... At the moment!

[ichthyous]

Traffic higher yesterday and much higher today...looks like people are back to work and holidays over.

However, I checked one of my searches that was brining in tons up traffic up until about Nov 26th and then it fell off a cliff. The page layout was so full of items breaking up the organic serps that once you fall below top 2 you are just gone. At #3 I was far down the page.

In general, traffic fell off a cliff across a wide swath of terms in December. My overall search traffic was down 27% and direct traffic (images) down 30%. Every location was down, with US, UK, Australia, Canada, France, and Germany seeing drops from 22%-40%. So the December updates really hit hard and I'm not sure if a lasting recovery is in the cards yet....

[RedBar]

Unless something remarkable happens in my last five hours of the day, my traffic is actually getting lower and could be the lowest day of the year so far.

Methinks 25 years of G is coming to an inauspicious end.

[Treud]

During the holidays traffic went down but the time on site went up. ! What is better quality

Received some leads and orders. So it’s better quality traffic for me.

Of course it’s nowhere since a year or two. But still better that the December massacre

[nuthin]

Google seems to always roll back to a cr*p version of their database from around Dec~ and we're now back at work , so please enlighten us with the latest SERP's, let's see or do we have to wait until end of January? surely not Google, you've done your holidays index now ...!

It;s been like this forever as long as I've been doin' SEO.

[Martin Ice Web]

So, when most of the shop owners are reporting lack of quality traffic and sales than the last spam update was clearly not related to spam but to take free sales away from organic traffic.

[nuthin]

Hey at least they don't make it so blatantly obvious that they've 'fixed the organic results' the past couple of months. ha ha ;)

As was previously mentioned in this thread it's been like this for the past 25 years, nothing new.

We're waiting Google... 2025 is here. we would also love to start making some money... ORGANICALLY.

Guaranteed the SERP's for reputable sites are going to look hell of a lot better when a software engineer decides to allow many that make their search engine, - "more relevant' back into it. =]

[Martin Ice Web]

Hey at least they don't make it so blatantly obvious

and don´t forget, they allways give you helpfull advice how to rank better

[nuthin]

You know around 2006 is when they removed don't be evil? Pretty much sums it up. ;)

At least they came to terms with it.

[Mark_A]

I am wondering if my timing is off.

Starting towards the end of 2024 we started a 12 month SEO program focussing on Google.

At about the same time Google and its competitors all began to use AI more widely.

AI has the potential to negate SEO completely, did we chose the wrong timing?

[RedBar]

Do I have a G Spy in my office? I posted this on Monday:

It needs to achieve 75% of my January to November 2024 average

Monday 77%
Tuesday 76% Thanks to the final two hours
Today 53% After 15 hours

[RedBar]

Monday 77%
Tuesday 76% Thanks to the final two hours
Today 53% After 15 hours

Wednesday 81.5%

Nothing else to say since no one else is posting !

[Treud]

7th was another day of boting record for me, 4 times the usual users, and bandwidth remain same (as GSC).

Yesterday traffic was crap, same as today. Looks like something will arrive soon.

[mosxu]

2025 it may not be worth lifting a finger at the end we will be probably at a loss!

The algo is not delivering prosperity for hard working webmasters!

[Martin Ice Web]

...it is getting worse day by day and the spam update curiously vanished away all our main selling items. I think amazon will get much stronger this year

[Treud]

traffic surge is from GPTBot/1.2 !

[Micha]

So whatever Google is doing, it's bad. I took the time today to look at my competitors and they are crashing in the same way as my news page. Google News is also funny again, the source page of my website there only shows articles that are months old and the topic page of my niche is full of fake news from some sites that are all brand new.

Well, and the shop is at a standstill. There is a lot of traffic from Google, but that doesn't result in any sales.

The year has started badly, but it would be surprising if Google changed its approach. I still wonder what Google's ultimate goal is in this. It can't be in the company's interest to annoy users so much. I can't imagine they think it's that good, especially in countries where their AI crap doesn't matter yet.

[seokees]

I really still can't get my head around. Why the relatively stable ups-an-downs in traffic, not catastrophical. But the decline in conversions (my site (slow decline in 2024 and increasing in 2025), and hundreds of posts, blogs, comments etc of webmaster all over the world witht the decline in sales and other conversions)?

[RedBar]

Will someone please re-boot all the www search engines ?

After 12 hours of my Googleday my global site was on 20% with several sites as low as 10%.

I have several friends with local and regional non-online B2C shops and services and all of them are experiencing their worst-ever trading in years, not including the forced shutdowns in 2020-22, with several of them considering closure. How do I know this? Simply because they have come to me for business help and advice wondering whether opening an online shop etc is their way forward.

Some I can help others I cannot but what I do is show them how my traffic has been decimated since 2020. In general Western consumer spending confidence seems to have all but vanished for reasons I understand but which we do not talk about here.

[seokees]

What are those reasons RedBar?

[RedBar]

We don't do politics here :-)

[ichthyous]

Some I can help others I cannot but what I do is show them how my traffic has been decimated since 2020. In general Western consumer spending confidence seems to have all but vanished for reasons I understand but which we do not talk about here.

My traffic has suddenly shot upward this week...it's much higher so I guess the holidays were really keeping traffic low

@RedBar I have seen a massive shift in customer behavior in 2024 compared even to 2023. Long periods with no inquiries and when they do inquire they seem to have the most ludicrous expectations regarding price. That has extended to corporate clients whose budgets are almost laughable despite the economy being strong here and most of them are making plenty of profit.

I cannot rule out a few factors...
1) due to the trends shifting so quickly, I think that it's more likely that Google is skimming the viable sales off the top and leaving only less viable customers going directly to websites. I don't know how this is achieved but I suspect that is most of the issue
2) demographics...I sell high proced items that are discretionary sales and luxury goods for the home. Nobody needs it, but lots of people want it. My typical buyer is older...from.late 30s to late 60s. As millenials and GenZ became a bigger part of the customer base I am.seeing that they are unrealistic almost to the point of delusional in their expectations. For example I got a young attorney yesterday email me that "this item is exactly what I need for my office"...he wanted framed artwork at up to 72 inches in size and had a $500 budget. The item at that size is $12,500. I would think any attorney would be less clueless but not so...its like suddenly everyone took stupid pills in 2024. Similarly inquiries regarding services are also coming in with ridiculously low budget expectations. This leads me to start thinking about winding down my business slowly. 2024 was still a great year for me, but only because I landed one monster contract that has kept me busy for months.

At no point in my 20+ years in sales online did I ever just delete the majority of inquiries without responding. I do now.

[RedBar]

its like suddenly everyone took stupid pills in 2024.

Insofar as I am concerned especially so in the West and I have absolutely no idea why other than people are seeing bulk B2B prices on Chinese and Indian trading boards and they think they can buy that item shipped halfway across the world singly in their country ... Any other suggestions? Obviously I'm talking about my specialised construction products from many different countries.

[renatovieira]

Lots of traffic this morning from US. Anyone else?

[RedBar]

Dead!

Monday 77%
Tuesday 76%
Wednesday 81.5%
Thursday 41.5%
Friday 30% after 12 hours
These 5 days so far 62.1%

Genuine B2B enquiries zero ... In my widget world January is very important in one specific Western sector for those requiring stocks for the Easter period since shipments need to be made by the end of February at the very latest.

The carnage continues.

[Fluff_Nutz]

Traffic was up by +90% over the festive holiday. Even traffic from the corrupted Google company gave me an increase of +150%. Everything was going nicely. However, yesterday it all changed. I now have a drop of -25%. Why? I did nothing to cause the drop. My team are back to creating articles again. If its due to continuing to create articles then that seems odd as that is usually how one grows.

I know people are back to work now, so I expect a drop. Just after creating so much content over these past few months I do not expect to drop all the way back to the levels of traffic I had in August. Where is the growth? Why can't I keep it?

I did get bombed by bots yesterday. It occasionally happens. Not often. Maybe once very few months. But being with Mediavine this has no impact as its Sessions they look at and not Page Views. So hitting my site seems a bit silly but it happens.

[RedBar]

Where is the growth?

Do you feel there is any real growth where you are?

All the main European economies have been in, or very close to, recession for several quarters now meanwhile I have clients in in BRICS+ who are trading very nicely indeed.

[puckparches]

Since my websites aren't making any money anymore (and everyone knows why!), I've been busy building an app. I've been using Gemini and ChatGPT for research, but let me tell you, their info is way off sometimes. Without our websites and the content we create, they're basically nothing. I think they'll eventually realize this and make some changes, because they need our websites to survive.

[christianz]

LLMs are not databases, so they can't really store exact data or recent data. They just "interpolate" over some limited fuzzy information inside them and come up with "good enough-ish" responses. LLMs need websites but websites don't need LLMs.