March 2025 Google Search Observations

[Micha]

and the next heavy drop. The shop and news page are virtually down today, the ranking has plummeted, and Google traffic is 0 so far... So it goes on...

[edited by: not2easy at 11:16 am (utc) on Mar 1, 2025]
[edit reason] new month, new thread, split [/edit]

[goodoldweb]

Some good news: Trump Justice Dept. reaffirms Biden-era proposal to break up Google.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/03/07/google-doj-chrome-anthropic-break-up/

[edited by: not2easy at 11:32 am (utc) on Mar 12, 2025]
[edit reason] readability [/edit]

[EditorialGuy]

Is that good news? Mightn't Chrome (and other browsers based on Chrome's guts) be neglected or run into the ground? Google at least has an incentive to maintain Chrome.

[Micha]

This is probably good news for websites, as it means that Google has less data to use for ranking. Besides, it can't hurt to break Google's market power in the browser sector.

[goodoldweb]

Is that good news? Mightn't Chrome (and other browsers based on Chrome's guts) be neglected or run into the ground? Google at least has an incentive to maintain Chrome.

Letting the fat greedy cat watch the milk is never a good idea.

Google stronghold on the search market started by getting users to install the Google search (spy) bar, chrom was part two in their plan for total web control.

Removing chrom will put a major dent. The question i am asking is how soon? They've been abusing thier power for far too long.

[Martin Ice Web]

We got under attack from bots last night. This usualy happens when google plays around with serps. So, we have a traffic dump from about -40% today.

[Micha]

@Martin Ice Web Copycats ;-). We were attacked all day yesterday, it only stopped this morning. However, traffic is currently normal (bad)

[Martin Ice Web]

Yes it stopped early in der morning and just right now it has started again.

Someone any idea how to prevent openAI from crawling?

[not2easy]

OpenAI Crawlers and Bots: [webmasterworld.com...]

[insideout]

Traffic sucks BIG time today without any sign of SERP volatility !

[Martin Ice Web]

@not2easy: thanx. but the crawlers do not pay attention to robots.txt.
Even .htaccess rewrite to NC does not help
and my IP blocking list has become enormous dimensions.

[mosxu]

“Larry Page just started an AI company, with a focus on manufacturing, called Dynatomics“

Is he after manufacturing what Amazon is selling? Or what you selling?

[haramamba]

@Martin Ice Web
Get these files and ban the ranges:
[openai.com...]
[openai.com...]
[openai.com...]

Yes, the firewall blocking is the best solution for now.

[Martin Ice Web]

Thnx. i will try it

[ichthyous]

It has become impossible to filter out your own visits to your site from your analytics now if using Chrome. I am seeing my traffic being routed through mail.google.com servers now with a new IP address each visit. I am also seeing traffic routed through t.co...what is that? It's clearly my own visits but why would it ever be routed through X? So now all the apple device visits are obfuscated and all the Google browsers. Soon analytics will be much less accurate.

[haramamba]

@ichthyous
Did you check headers? Do they contain the X-Forwarded-For?

[ichthyous]

@haramamba I would have to check my server logs for that, and it's just not that important. I still have the location, but I can't exclude my own visits from more simple types of stat counters.

[Micha]

It remains bad... No matter where you look, the traffic is really bad, even if the placement is okay. I no longer believe that anything will improve, and the store is now dead. Not a single sale was made by users sent by Google, not even through AdWords (which just confirms to me that AdWords is fraudulent).

The news page is doing more harm than good. I'm now at the point where I'm considering my self-employment, because if things continue like this, I'll have to give up after more than 10 years.

[haramamba]

@ichthyous
Change the user agent to something ridiculous and filter your visitors by browser.

[not2easy]

There is an updated thread on OpenAI Crawlers and Bots today: [webmasterworld.com...]

[BigKat]

I no longer believe that anything will improve, and the store is now dead. Not a single sale was made by users sent by Google, not even through AdWords

None of the AI engines handle commercial/buyer intent queries very well, if at all, including Google's Gemini (AI Overviews). Info-only focused AI, and excessive ad spam, is why sales have flat-lined and many stores are in cardiac arrest

Whomever is going to become the leader in AI engines will be the one who is most helpful to average users, including the many who have historically relied on legacy search engines to help them purchase products online and find service providers. Once these AI engine executives sober up from being drunk on their ability to steal our IP with impunity, maybe they will realize if they want to grow their user base they will have to do a better job at fulfilling all the needs of average users.

[KaseyM]

Anyone else's Discover been sent to zero since early March?

This may be the end...

[EditorialGuy]

Our Google UVs and pageviews are way up today, with the added traffic distributed across the usual range of pages. This is after a so-so February (which was down slightly from January) and lots of peaks and valleys over the last couple of weeks. At the moment our UVs are up nearly 40 percent over the same day last week, with four hours left in the day. I don't expect the burst of goodness to last.

[goodoldweb]

Still dead as, all three, our ebay store and two website shops.

Sick organic traffic, adwords traffic even worse.

Top organic positions for many of our keywords, good ad placements too. WTH!?

Checked from several devices, using diffrent ips, diffrent browsers, incognito and location off.

I'm starting to think the economic downturn togther with recent major stock market meltdowns may have put a major dent in shoppers sentiments.

[Micha]

@goodoldweb: That may be a factor, as is the AI nonsense in the US, but in Germany it is exactly the same, and complaints can also be heard in other countries. Besides, when the economy is bad, things don't collapse immediately, but gradually, and at the moment we can talk about a collapse in one day. I have spoken to many shop owners (not only from Germany) and they all say that on March 4, sales via Google traffic plummeted. They all have the same traffic pattern in the Merchant Center and generally speaking, rankings have not dropped. Google has done something, but nobody knows exactly what. What we do know: it is killing small shops right now.

[RubicCubed]

I'm starting to think the economic downturn togther with recent major stock market meltdowns may have put a major dent in shoppers sentiments.

March 10 and 11 we had good traffic and a lot of sales. Yes, the economy and economic uncertainty are a factor but Google clearly has both hands on the steering wheel. Maybe the reason why we had a couple good days is because Google was testing some new layout to combat the bad press and lawsuit about AIO sending no traffic. On March 12, traffic and sales quickly retreated back to their stagnant state.

There's no question that Google is the main reason why we suffer from depressed traffic and sales. Google took our content to keep traffic for themselves and shows ads instead of organic options for shoppers. There really is no way Google can make what they did with AIO right, and they can't reverse the damage they already caused to a wide swath of the internet. The only ones that survive this are the big boys who can reduce staff and expenses to exist with a much smaller footprint. Part timers can survive too because earning from their online work may supplement their primary sources of income. Those of us at small businesses are just waiting for the next round of layoffs before the final drop of blood inevitably drips out.

[mosxu]

Guys?

Anyone watching YouTube on their TV? In years I have not seen an ad from a small website! Most run YouTube ads for sure!

Take this scenario for search no profiled buyer sees any ad or ranking of your website it is not about economic downturns!

If a browser profiles a user who clicks on max 3 websites and buys right away we can bid our house and will not show for this user!

It is a very small club and we are not in it!

[Conro]

Today, Google released the new major update. Let's see if they will improve the visibility of the sites or if they will put a cross on them.

[not2easy]

This update was announced today: [status.search.google.com...]

All it says is

Released the March 2025 core update. The rollout may take up to 2 weeks to complete.

[MayankParmar]

What are the odds this is one of the last big algo update as the search gets replaced by AI mode? Which I think has a different algorithm

[sk7411]

Final nail in the coffin . Thank you guys! It was great till it lasted . :)

[goodoldweb]

Guys, those with web stores. Try checking your keyword positions from multiple devices, multiple ips, multiple browsers, in incognito mode and without. Add the word "buy" to your query.

What do you see?

[mosxu]

Anyone got customers reporting funny actions done to them on chrome while trying to convert?

[Whitey]

Not much to report at this stage compared to last year's seismic shifts, I see. Time will tell. So, here we all go again.

[searchengineland.com...]

[Conro]

At the moment, if I search with the same query on different search engines, all search engines except Google return an index with the sites that answer my query. The only messed up and useless one is Google, it's probably never been this messed up even in the year it just came out

[Martin Ice Web]

OK. with the update rolled out sales are off. coincidence?

And i didn´t realized it but today the is the entry at the very top

results for "my location" - choose region

so result seems to be 100% geolocation. And there is no way to disable geolocation.

[Micha]

For me, it's the other way around: Yesterday at 5 p.m., the shop was overrun. We haven't had a day like that since December. Currently, however, it's rather quiet again, but that's probably because of the time of day.

News site today: some Discover traffic again, which is strange because all the big news sites are reporting on an incident in my niche today. My site usually doesn't stand a chance in such cases.

[Martin Ice Web]

@Micha,

yesterday was OK, but today it is a very quiet.

[christianz]

Initial keyword changes are NOT looking good...

[goodoldweb]

Still very quiet.

Live unique products webshop with very littel comptetion. Top keyword positions across the board and a running adwords campaign. Anemic traffic and no sales.

Ebay shop started receiving a trickle of sales in the last couple of days.

[RubicCubed]

It is so dead, almost like we're in an economic depression or something. Very little traffic from Google, and we can't sell to Google's users if they don't even visit. Can't remain starving much longer like this. :(

I saw the US is accepting public feedback for what they call an AI action plan. I think the only action to save search for publishers is for AI Overviews to go because it's taking all the traffic and pushing organic results very far down the page where nobody sees them. According to the page [whitehouse.gov...] the acceptance of feedback ends at midnight. I submitted my feedback that AI should not replace our pages in search and leave us as the creators with nothing.

[Fluff_Nutz]

If the word of people, including those that created AI, are worried about the damage it can do in the long run. If these words are indeed true. Then why do we have AI? At all? If they seriously mean what they say with their so-called ''worry'' then it should be banned. Otherwise its hypocrisy. Alas, I don't see much of anything good coming. Greed blinds even the mightiest of us all. So it will likely hang around whilst its seen as a viable profit maker.

Whilst I'm thankfully not seeing too much of a dent being made into the site. Though I don't rely on Google any more anyway. My traffic comes from other sources. I have, however, noticed a huge drop on my Youtube channel. I was getting 30-50 views per video. Which is bad in itself for how old the channel is. Lack of constancy so my fault. But now I cannot get past 10 views. So whatever this ''update'' is doing its seems to be impacting Youtube

Myself, and others I have spoken with, have seen that from time to time our traffic numbers on Youtube can be flying. Giving us some nice steady growth. Then an invisible wall appears and traffic is just dead. Complete flatline. I found it suspicious at first. Maybe it was my fault? Competition? Lack of interest? However, when others also see this negative impact it becomes more of an issue. Kept an eye on traffic this time around. To no surprise the wall hit slap bang the same day this ''update'' was announced. So annoying.

When traffic comes to a halt like it has on my Youtube channel I never know if I should continue posting or not. It just leaves me confused and a huge lack of motivation. I'm not even sure the content will even pick up later in its life.

[ichthyous]

30-50 views on YouTube videos is absolutely nothing. I have very few YT subscribers and I am getting 150-2000 views on my shorts. I do have all of them embedded on my website though, so that helps. Posting on YouTube is very hit or miss. You really need to post at the right time and with the correct caption and opening image. And let's face it, most videos are not that interesting. I don't expect a lot of attention as it's all shot with my phone and slapped up quickly. I don't have hours every day to produce YouTube content. So I don't expect to attract tons of subscribers, but it does help to document my products very well

[Fluff_Nutz]

I am ashamed to admit it. I have over 4,000+ videos on my Youtube channel, across the span of 10+yrs. Keep in mind I was not taking it seriously and consistency is a huge problem. Throughout that time I never, once, tried to promote my content. At all. I regret it a lot. Each and every day actually. Had I known what I know now back then I might have been in a much better position.

But yes, I do agree with you. Marketing and promoting is incredibly important. Life lesson as far as I am concerned. My videos now get blasted on to the site and across the kitchen sink. Soon the whole world will know of my content MUWHAHAHA!

[MayankParmar]

indexing issues, anyone? Console says URL is unknown and does not index it for three hours.

[ichthyous]

Big traffic drops yesterday and today...my search was -8% and direct was -34% yesterday. Today also starting lower, although it's early. I'm losing top ranking terms on desktop as well.

[ichthyous]

Question...some years back Google announced that it would ignore nofollow tags on links if I remember correctly. Does that mean that it is worthwhile to pursue nofollwed links these days? I understand "for the traffic" yadda yadda...I am talking about a boost in ranking from accumulating a good number (hundreds or thousands possibly) of nofollowed links from a very high authority site. Does anyone have recent experience with this? I normally don't waste much time with nofollowed links.

[Whitey]

@ichthyous The short answer is yes; nofollow links can have value, but not in the way dofollow links do.

The longer answer: Google clarified in 2019 that it treats nofollow, ugc, and sponsored attributes as hints rather than absolute directives. This means nofollow links from high-authority sites might pass some ranking signals, though likely not as much as dofollow links.

However, the real value of nofollow links often comes from referral traffic, brand exposure, and possible secondary link opportunities (e.g., someone finds your content through a nofollowed link and later links to it naturally).

If you can get hundreds or thousands of nofollow links from a high-authority site, it could be beneficial, but it won't replace the value of a strong dofollow link profile. It’s a nice bonus, not a core ranking strategy.

[Dooku]

Anyone got customers reporting funny actions done to them on chrome while trying to convert?

Not sure, unless you mean scary things like this?:
[seroundtable.com...]

......beyond sick.

Although I suspect some weird things also, but can not put my finger on it....unless a customer informs me directly.

[ichthyous]

BIG drop in USA traffic today...it's almost noon and -44%. Canada has also been extremely low...today it's -58%. I am wondering if part of this is that Canadians no longer are visiting US businesses, but the downtrend in CA traffic has been worsening since 2024. UAE has also been low lately, but it's Ramadan so not surprising.

[Micha]

The shop: More and more visitors every day, but the conventions have been at 0 since Saturday. February was already a disaster, March is already significantly worse.
News site: The ranking has collapsed here, finance sites currently seem to be very popular on Google, because even with my main keywords, such sites are displayed in first place.
So it's as expected, the update is once again hitting small websites hard.