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]

[ichthyous]

FWIW, in my own experience, adding new content can be an exercise in frustration because it seldom attracts significant traffic in the short term. All of the search engines (not just Google) can be slow to rank new content even for topics that aren't especially competitive. When I publish a new article, I don't expect to see much in the way of results for months.

I find this is also true for articles...but most of my content are pages with unique images which are the best of their kind in the world basically. I am sometimes shocked at how quickly they get indexed and start performing. Alt text is crucial, and also interlinking similar images to form clusters of related images that reinforce each other, aka "silos"

[goodoldweb]

Is it possible really (for joe public) to own an Android mobile device and not be logged into any Google service, tracked right left and center including device ip and mac address?

Now go figure what "personal" search results they are getting when looking for your products, based on their search history.

It looks to me like google just dialled up personalisation 5 notches higher for better ad revenues.

[Micha]

@goodoldweb You could be right about that and it would explain the dominance of some websites in my area (and why my news page went down).

[renatovieira]

Huge drop this morning. It's an eternal roller coaster.

[BigKat]

Huge drop this morning.

Just when you think it can't get worse it does. I see the big drop too. This is real bad.

[mosxu]

@goodoldweb

Good thinking!

Moving the cheese for so many webmasters is a zero sum game! Already out smarted by deepseek and open AI after they lost most of the buyers to Amazon now they are losing information seekers too!

[ichthyous]

Huge drop this morning. It's an eternal roller coaster

Not for me, it was quite strong today and since the weekend...now the previous week was very bad for my traffic

[renatovieira]

Massive drop again.

[Micha]

I agree: Shop - massive drop, sales from customers coming from Google once again 0. News page: ranking jumps more and more back and forth, but at least a sign of life from Discover traffic, even if it's little.

[Martin Ice Web]

We do have rising traffic since 3 days. Nearly +70%. It doesn´t mean thtat this is good or targeted traffic. Sales are almost the same or less.

[ichthyous]

We do have rising traffic since 3 days. Nearly +70%. It doesn´t mean thtat this is good or targeted traffic. Sales are almost the same or less.

Exactly my experience...Feb 16th - 22nd huge drops in global traffic, less of a drop from USA. Feb 23rd-25th big increases. The entire time I have been picking up new top 3 ranking terms. New inquiries are very sporadic again, and the quality of the inquiry is junk. So an increase in traffic doesn't necessarily mean anything...

[puckparches]

Welcome to our world Chegg:

Chegg on Monday filed suit in federal district court against Google, claiming that AI summaries of search results have hurt the online education company’s traffic and revenue.
[cnbc.com ]

[Dooku]

Chegg on Monday filed suit ...

G are not only acting and are a monopoly but they are displaying outright criminal behaviour.
Every change and move in their algo updates is nothing more then "let's see what we can get away with"......"nobody can touch us, we are too big and will crush anyone who stands in our way"...

All we can do is hope until a tipping point has been reached and suddenly they wake up to a different reality where their search engine is not the almighty #1 any more.
And that day may be nearer then we think:
[telegraph.co.uk...]

[gatormark]

Traffic and Adsense revenue are back to normal after a school holiday week here in the USA.

Concerning Google, every company tries to enhance themselves financially. I am just trying to figure out how the AI overviews help Google financially. On my end, I see various layouts based on the time of day and the platform used. I understand the value of sponsored ads at the top of pages. I don’t understand the value of this new thing where they’re showing images at the top of pages. I only see that periodically. Again, the AI overviews are puzzling.

[RedBar]

I always hold my breathe when typing something like this however my February 2025 level is now very slightly ahead of 2024, nowhere near the years before that but it least I seem to have stabilised with visitor patterns and downloads seemingly normal.

Therefore it must be time for another flux update?

[renatovieira]

Just out of curiosity, guys.

Today I'm noticing something weird. I'm only getting traffic from the east coast of the US.

From the west half of the US, there's simply no one accessing my site.

Has anyone experienced this?

[Martin Ice Web]

I am just trying to figure out how the AI overviews help Google financially

It is pure training.
If AI overview is good enough that users don´t click anything else the AI can propably say that this answer is correct. (and i mean if it has shown >bigbigtime without poeple clicking other sources)
As you know that many queries bound to a single query because it would produce the same output (see it like the reverse of synonyms ) big g could sooner or later
just display AI overviews with many ads without showing blue links or the original website.

[MayankParmar]

Honestly, it makes me wonder what Google really wants. Nearly 80% of the stories I write are linked back by publishers like Forbes. Yet, a major scoop I posted on Bing Copilot Search—also picked up by Search Engine Land (https://searchengineland.com/microsoft-bing-testing-copilot-search-452500) has barely 500 visitors. It's that bad.

Nothing seems to work for me since the Google updates. So much for original content.

I'm too attached to my work to let it go... but I’m not sure what to do to recover the site.

[BigKat]

it makes me wonder what Google really wants.

Google wants publishers to create content, to train their AI for inclusion in AI Overviews, so they can keep users on their site and send publishers no traffic. The bigger question I have is how long will it take for publishers to realize this and take some sort of decisive action (quit publishing, require a login to view content/membership, etc.) so they can benefit from their work in some way?

[ichthyous]

From the west half of the US, there's simply no one accessing my site.

Has anyone experienced this?

Not today, but traffic from the west was not very strong. Traffic in general was very low today. USA is -21% at 8pm. Canada -71%, Australia -33%, Germany -14%. So just bad all around...

[ichthyous]

Google wants publishers to create content, to train their AI for inclusion in AI Overviews, so they can keep users on their site and send publishers no traffic. The bigger question I have is how long will it take for publishers to realize this and take some sort of decisive action (quit publishing, require a login to view content/membership, etc.) so they can benefit from their work in some way?

Exactly, we are just here as fodder for Google. If you are not creating a unique product then your days are numbered online. AI can only process info, but people will always need physical products and they will have to go to a website for that....those of us using our sites to sell something physical will fare better I think. Very few webmasters have the brand or recognition to lock their content behind a paywall and charge for it.

[BigKat]

If you are not creating a unique product then your days are numbered online. AI can only process info, but people will always need physical products and they will have to go to a website for that...

Unfortunately even selling unique products still doesn't matter since Google will display ads, use the other organic results and "features" in the SERPS to direct shoppers elsewhere (mostly Amazon). Yes, people are still buying but if you can't be found then you're not selling.

[EditorialGuy]

Google wants publishers to create content, to train their AI for inclusion in AI Overviews, so they can keep users on their site and send publishers no traffic. The bigger question I have is how long will it take for publishers to realize this and take some sort of decisive action (quit publishing, require a login to view content/membership, etc.) so they can benefit from their work in some way?

There's a vast stockpile of publishers and content on the Web, so maybe Google can train its AI perfectly well with a fraction of what's out there now? Google might actually benefit from a culling of the herd.

[mosxu]

“a culling of the herd”

This sounded so wrong

[gatormark]

Google might actually benefit from a culling of the herd.

Not only should Google benefit, but those of us provide unique content should also benefit. There are so many websites out there that just regurgitate existing information. They need to be weeded out. The question is, can Google differentiate between the longtime industry leaders and the newbies who are just regurgitating existing information?

[RubicCubed]

who are just regurgitating existing information?

You just described AI Overviews.

“a culling of the herd”

For those that don't realize it yet, we're the herd being culled.

[renatovieira]

Semrush is on fire. AdSense and Analytics not working properly, SERPs up and down since morning... Here we go again...

[christianz]

Noticeable drop this morning.

[christianz]

The question is, can Google differentiate between the longtime industry leaders and the newbies who are just regurgitating existing information?

They generally can't but they could a little bit last year. This year they seem to have given up.

[BigKat]

There's a vast stockpile of publishers and content on the Web, so maybe Google can train its AI perfectly well with a fraction of what's out there now? Google might actually benefit from a culling of the herd.

If Google didn't benefit, they wouldn't do it unless it were by force.

Our content is directly competing against AI Overviews to be seen today. Therefore, "culling the herd" would eliminate Google's competition (us and our content) so that AIO can one day replace organic results completely. It's bad enough now with organic results appearing 1+ scrolls down the page, but I believe it will get worse. Maybe the next phase in eliminating organic results will be showing fewer results or just pushing them to page 2. After that, AIO may be the default view with a "web results" option given to users to search the web. After that Google would likely drop the web results tab entirely, claiming few use it, then organic results are gone for good. This is one way that Google can "cull the herd."