February 2025 Google Search Observations

[mosxu]

Bros,

In the news G unveils quantum chip that confirms the existence of parallel universes…

Who is that stupid to buy their stock?

[edited by: not2easy at 5:28 pm (utc) on Feb 1, 2025]
[edit reason] New month, new thread [/edit]

[RedBar]

so we block all Hetzner traffic

I thought I had too but just like the Huawei Signaporean bot they seem to break all rules and are unstoppable for me.

[goodoldweb]

Seeing increased "china based" bots while local traffic is almost at a standstill, mainly one page zoombis. We're in Australia.

0 sales.

[mosxu]

@goodoldweb

Block China and still one will have zero sales.
Don’t get confused it was never that bad real humans see nothing of you!

[goodoldweb]

@mosxu

Here's the kicker, we still appear in great positions for many of our keyphrases, (checked in incognito from several devices, not necessarily mine, friends and family devices), so "humans" still see our listings, BUT their behaviour seem to be strange. One page hits, like they've landed on that page accidentally.

We have never exprianced china based bot activity on this particular website (live aquarium supplies). We're getting a flood of china based bots in the last 48 hours.

Quite confused by what's going on really. Never exprianced 0 sales days. It's ridiculous.

[mosxu]

@goodoldweb

Try logged in other users not family or friends and your locations off your phone off!

Think of where personalisation could not reach

[renatovieira]

Heavy traffic this morning. Anyone else?

[christianz]

If by "heavy traffic" you mean huge drops and record low traffic - yes.

[RubicCubed]

Heavy traffic this morning. Anyone else?

Not here in the US, unless you mean heavy bot traffic.

[renatovieira]

If it was bot traffic, I would know by the low conversion. That's not the case. AdSense is sky high today. My traffic is 89% coming from the U.S.

It's either an update or some recovery after feb was way below average.

Usually, those who have high traffic don't come here to share on the forum. So it's not common to see a post like this here on the forum ;-)

[ichthyous]

Heavy traffic this morning. Anyone else?

Traffic shot up at 2pm sharp yesterday and stayed very high for the rest of the day. Today it's not as strong, but also not lagging as much as for the last 10 days...especially for a holiday weekend.

The truly fascinating thing about when Google works its magic and makes all the traffic vanish is how the inquiries immediately revert to the lowest possible quality. I am back to clueless people with low budgets inquiring about things they can't afford at all. That had stopped in January at least, but they're baaaaaack

[goodoldweb]

Think of where personalisation could not reach

That was the first thing i tried before trying incognito. More or less the same results. We have unique products with littel competition.

The weirdness continues.

[RubicCubed]

Usually, those who have high traffic don't come here to share on the forum. So it's not common to see a post like this here on the forum ;-)

I've seen good days myself, but they never last. I think many, including myself, have grown accustomed to a good day in traffic/earnings followed by days or weeks of bad days. Unfortunately those very rare good days I see just aren't enough to pay the bills by themselves. Hope the boost holds for you.

[mosxu]

@goodolderb

Incognito is outside personalisation it proofs nothing!

Get a guy phone in a train kind of thing provided your locations are off :))

The date gathering and profiling is very deep and it is going on for years!

[delorean]

"page not indexed, crawled – currently not indexed"

this started in Feb 15

anyone having same issue?

[not2easy]

anyone having same issue?

Scroll up a few lines to Feb. 15and you'll see others have noticed the same issue.

[Chris travel 30]

@delorean i've had the same. I just let the sitemaps re-crawl, that were effected, now 90 % of the "not indexed" pages are back in status "indexed" might also be a bug, but I don't think so

Besides that:

I noticed that my rankings were dropping, but: The conversions in affiliate sales (nearly 80 % of my revenue is affiliate) went up. So to my mind, google is sending "other" visitors to my sites at the moment. I've seen this patterns before: It was the same from mid August to end of December: The total visits went down to 50 % but the revenue increased. From 1st January the traffic went up again and now its dropping since 6 Feb. All seems a bit fragile to me at the moment, but as long as I have an eye on everything and do notice, if something acts weird, I keep going with it. As long as the money comes in, to be honest.
By the last months I became more and more an observer of what happens and accepted that my options to "react" on googles shifts are very limited and below.

[RubicCubed]

The date gathering and profiling is very deep and it is going on for years!

It got much worse yesterday with Google starting to use digital fingerprinting. See the story: Experts Expose Google’s Silent Privacy Rollback, Calling Fingerprinting a Gateway to Mass Surveillance [digitalinformationworld.com]

I wonder how this fingerprinting will be used to adjust the search results? As it is now, Google traffic is near dead so it probably won't have much of an impact on me. Still it's another data point for Google to evaluate, and I'm sure they will use it for more than just ads.

[Dooku]

Google starting to use digital fingerprinting

A few years back G vowed to NOT use digital fingerprinting any more......yeah right!
My 2cnts is that chrome web browser market share is now declining.
I am seeing a slew of posts everywhere on how to degoogle and ditch chrome for a different browser.
Most probably G will know more then us and is predicting a larger decline in chrome browser usage in the near future.
So digital fingerprinting is their LAST resort to ID each and every user that goes online and profile them as detailed as possible.

[Micha]

Ranking drops on the news page, traffic is poor, Discover traffic is still dead. But the store has been making some sales again since Saturday.

@dokku as I also want to switch, which browser would you recommend?

[ichthyous]

Traffic is atrocious today. It's a holiday in US but traffic is also low internationally. I smell a rat.

[Dooku]

@Mischa,
I have tried many in the past, still test some of them now and then to check if anything has changed.
You can go full on blocking method by using browsers like Librewolf or Firefox-Focus and similar.
However, in the end you need to have a STABLE browser platform that can be adjusted and still works with at least on 99% of all websites but still provides enough options to block the most intrusive sh|t online. And together with an ad blocker like Ublock Origin I consider Firefox the best middle ground.
(Librewolf is basically Firefox when all settings have been manually adjusted for privacy by you!)

Obviously browsers like chrome and Edge need to be avoided at all cost, however browsers like Vivaldi, Brave, Opera..etc... have also too many issues under the hood.....some or other glitch always pops up while using these.....or connections to fishy ip's when checking with Simplewall.

[BigKat]

@Dooku

Fingerprinting is just another example of the unchecked market abuse of user's privacy. Don't forget one of the antitrust remedies proposed by the DOJ is Google be forced to sell Chrome. Fingerprinting ensures Google will still be able to collect user data in the unlikely event the Courts force Google to sell Chrome. I also recall Google changed their policies regarding AI to now allow use for surveillance and military applications. Using fingerprinting will surely benefit those applications (surveillance and military), but I don't see it being used to make the search results any better. IMO, Google has abandoned organic search results which are now buried far down the page. At the top are AI Overviews, ads and refinement boxes leaving organic results well out of view.

[ichthyous]

Something major is afoot...my traffic collapsed entirely yesterday (search down 22% and direct down 19%) and is still down today (search is -29%, direct -35%)...even link traffic is way down. Some major change has happened either to the algo or to the front end and it's getting worse and worse...

[gatormark]

Winter break is happening in various parts of the USA. If you rely on students for traffic, traffic will be down about 15%.

[ichthyous]

@gatormark it's not winter break here in the US...that is from christmas to January. Spring break is the end of March. So no student breaks that I know of in mid Feb.
Plus a huge drop in international traffic too? UK is -33% today! Worse than the US, which is -22%. Canada, UAE, EU all down.

[BigKat]

@ichthyous

Is it possible you are losing to AI Overviews? Others have noticed an increase in where AIO is displayed. The Advanced Web Ranking AIO tool shows a 5% increase in a month. Also the number of AIO citations referencing Youtube as a source [searchengineland.com...] has risen 25% in just a month. Meaning it looks like Google is trying to keep searchers on their property by taking away any citations we may have. Just a thought, but it doesn't explain direct type in traffic going down.

[ichthyous]

Is it possible you are losing to AI Overviews? Others have noticed an increase in where AIO is displayed. The Advanced Web Ranking AIO tool shows a 5% increase in a month. Also the number of AIO citations referencing Youtube as a source [searchengineland.com...] has risen 25% in just a month. Meaning it looks like Google is trying to keep searchers on their property by taking away any citations we may have. Just a thought, but it doesn't explain direct type in traffic going down.

@BigKat Could be, but not really sure how to check that broadly. In the last week my visibility has surged though...I am back to steadily gaining top 3 and top 10 ranking terms again. Not sure how my visibility can be surging while my traffic has dropped so much...today we are looking at a 20% drop in search and a 28% drop in direct traffic compared to the last 4 Tuesdays. Link traffic is also down almost 60%.

[Micha]

It's getting more and more funny, now 4-year-old articles from my news page are showing up in the news and many keywords are now changing their ranking back and forth by more than 60 places. The traffic is correspondingly poor. This is absolutely absurd.

At least the shop has recovered a bit, it's still not doing very well, but at least it's not dead anymore.

[Martin Ice Web]

It is surprisingly quiet in this forum regarding the current google serps. This makes me wonder if the lack of traffic is a google or a website problem.

[gatormark]

@ichthyous

Many schools take “another” winter break in February during the week of Presidents’ Day. That is the case here in Georgia…the Atlanta area. Winter break is not the same all over the United States. Various states will be taking a spring break in March and April too.

[ChokenBako]

@Martin Many of us are no visible anymore at Google. On my side i came from 200.000 visitors per month by Google in 2023 to roughly 3000 in February 2025. I really don't care anymore about Google but for Bing which delivers by far more visitors.
From daily visiting this forum i am now checking from time to time if something is happening. If Google will change his SERPS maybe things will change.

[RedBar]

@MIW

It is surprisingly quiet in this forum regarding the current google serps.

I feel that many realise there is probably nothing / not a lot they can do to rectify / change anything. G has created / manipulated such a chaotc situation that possiby the only recommendation most webmasters could give to clients who especialy rely upon ecommerce sales is "pay to play", sad but true.

For other online sectors many may just keep updating since that may be all they do and may not be as obsessive as we are, some may be in complete meltdown since they have no "solution" and then, of course, I suspect many have just given-up and closed altogether, I know many sites in my industry that still exist yet the companies themselves have actually closed.

Insofar as my widget sites are concerned my plans have drastically changed and by Easter I shall only have two widget brochure info sites with all the current sites being melded into them.

[Mark_A]

My focus is PPC, we hired someone to SEO for us, so I look at their reports.

[gatormark]

I feel that many realise there is probably nothing / not a lot they can do to rectify / change anything.

Yup! Most of these conversations are useless because we are playing whack-a-mole. I decided a while back not to even worry about my Google rankings since there is little I can do to influence them.

Sure, I will check from time to time, but I’ve stopped making changes to my websites based on my rankings.

[Mark_A]

We have a website based chat widget.
It wakes up as each visitor arrives, and also says where they came from.
I get quite good feedback just from that.

[Martin Ice Web]

thanx for the input!

Prior ( some years ago) such a drastic change in google serps would have ended in heap of messages on WebmasterWorld. U know something was going on. But a quiet forum let me think there is a problem on our site. Maybe it is true that many webmasters have resigned or given up completly. Too bad, because it was a great indicator whether to stay calm or get into panic mode.

[ichthyous]

@gatormark I Googled it and found "Mid-winter break: One week in February (usually at or around President's Day) or March". This one is new for me...when I was a kid we didn't get as many breaks that I can remember...but that was ~40 years ago ;-). The only thing is that international traffic is down by as much or more as USA...so not sure if this is the ultimate cause. Traffic has been on a downward trajectory since the 6th, but really strongly in the last three days or so.

[RedBar]

because it was a great indicator whether to stay calm or get into panic mode.

I've never got into a panic mode however about 20 years ago I got into a great "puzzlement" mode when one of my sites lost many rankings. It took myself and tedster about 2 months to work out exactly what it was and as soon as this was correceted those rankings returned.

IMHO updates and SERPs changes are so belated it is almost an impossibiity to identify precisely which changes / modifications to a site one has made has had an apppreciable effect.

[BigKat]

I am back to steadily gaining top 3 and top 10 ranking terms again. Not sure how my visibility can be surging while my traffic has dropped so much

@ichthyous

Ranks really don't matter anymore because AI Overviews pushes everything else down the page a minimum of 399 pixels (closed) up to 1590 pixels (expanded). Since the most common resolution is 1080P, that's a lot of real estate lost to AIO. Ads and refinement boxes (People Also Ask, People Search For, etc.) also push organic results down further and render rank position as an unreliable data point. Where we appear, based on pixel location, is most important.

For Ai Overviews, there's a chart on this page ( [seroundtable.com...] ) that shows how AIO has slowly destroyed the CTR for organic results. Without AIO present last month, organic results had a 3.97% CTR rate. When AI Overviews was shown, the CTR for organic results plummets to a mere 0.64%. Since AI Overviews appears to be spreading, I think more of us will unfortunately be experiencing substantial losses in traffic.

[Micha]

Recommended reading: This describes and proves the Google chaos very well

[wallethub.com ]

[ichthyous]

@bigkat this is interesting will read it in full. To test this i ran a wide range of searches. I am not seeing AIO being used anymore now than last year to be honest. The same searches that had it before still have it and the rest not. But today my usa traffic is -25%, UK is -39%, Canada is -73%! The drop is international and across many sections of my site. Yet when I check ranking I'm still doing very well.

[BekaLC]

Created a website, submitted sitemap and google indexed pages right away. I tried searching for related keywords and indexed pages did indeed show up in google search results. But after couple of days pages still show as indexed (visible gsc and site:website) but when I test and search related keywords the pages do not show up in google results any more. Content is original, so are images and I tripple checked everything and there seems not to be any problems. P.S. pages do show up when you search for related keywords on bing and other search engines.

Actually same thing happened to my older website. It was working great and then after a year or so the indexed pages still showed up as indexed but did not respond to keyword search and did not show up in google results any more.

Somebody heeellp pleaase

[RedBar]

Unfortunately BekaLC this has been the situation normal for quite some time with G, even well-established sites are having these problems and since other engines are showing correctly then you know where the issue lays.

[gatormark]

@ichthyous

I’m 59. It is an entirely different world now. Schools today in the USA have multiple weeklong breaks during the year. Of course, it depends on your state and county. The schedules are nothing like when we were in school.

[ichthyous]

Yup! Most of these conversations are useless because we are playing whack-a-mole. I decided a while back not to even worry about my Google rankings since there is little I can do to influence them.

Actually that is not 100% true...new links and a constant stream of new content still do help to keep a site ranking higher in my experience. The problem is that ranking higher no longer correlates to higher traffic / sales for much of the year. You can have some weeks where traffic seems to be flowing almost normally, but then inevitably you'll have 10 - 21 days or so with suppressed traffic and no business.

[gatormark]

You can have some weeks where traffic seems to be flowing almost normally, but then inevitably you'll have 10 - 21 days or so with suppressed traffic and no business.

I do not have those kind of swings in my niche. The things that impact my traffic negatively are school holidays, weekends, and summer school vacation.

[delorean]

is affiliate disclaimer/disclosure required (for all countries?). If not included in article, will the blog be penalized? Based on my observation, some sites do have while others do not.

[renatovieira]

BIG drop this morning... Here we go again!

[RubicCubed]

Seeing more of the AI box this morning. :(

[Chris travel 30]

Now the Semrush Vola Sensor is heating up too