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]

[Conro]

From Google search console you are noticing an increase in pages in the "Detected section, but not currently index ed"?

[Micha]

@Conro Yep, for a few weeks now. I've checked all the URLs and they're all indexed.

[Conro]

My articles Indicated on GSC have disappeared completely if I search by url on Google. I saw that it started with old news and pages/tags, but now it is also affecting guides that are unique and original

[Micha]

Are they really not in the index? In other words, have you checked the URLs (including searching directly for the heading itself)?

[Conro]

Yes they are not present, I used site:urlname and urlname, but nothing, sometimes an article appears in its place that has a similar title but talks about something else. Another site of mine has been completely deindexed, but I knew it would be that way because it has affiliate links. Google wants everything for itself

[Micha]

Okay, that's hard. I would test it by simply removing the affiliate links from an article and triggering the indexing to see if it works. Unfortunately, Google seems to act arbitrarily, so it's hard to give a precise tip.

[Conro]

I just looked at semrush and all the sites I checked, even those that I thought were untouchable by now are losing keywords and traffic. By now the Google serps have become "empty", It's been a long time and I still don't give myself a logical explanation for all this, at least Bing has preserved its purpose as an index, but Google now ranks sites at random

[Martin Ice Web]

The update just kicked in. -60% so far.

[Micha]

Have you also noticed an increase in very old articles in Google News? My Discover feed is now full of articles that are over 4 weeks old and Google News also has months-old articles at the top.

[Skips]

As Google rolls out its first core update of 2025, I wonder - has anyone ever (or at least in the past couple of years) experienced an increase in traffic, improved traffic relevance, improved conversions or higher user engagement as a result of a core update? Or are these updates primarily aimed at maximizing Google's advertising revenue rather than enhancing search result relevance?

[Fluff_Nutz]

I used to read of Google ''updates'' giving people traffic and revenue increases all the time, over on Reddit anyway. Now, not so much. Usually its doom and gloom over on Reddit. Just as much as on here. If anyone, other than Google, is benefitting then they are larger sites and being quiet about it. Alas, I have even heard of large sites taking a hit these days. Most recently, LinkedIn.

In the past I have been hit and lost traffic, only when it ended did I get the lost traffic back. But this is not always guaranteed and, for me, its only ever happened once. Most the time its a drop and traffic does not return.

If you keep up to date with it all you will notice a trend going on as to when these ''updates'' occur. Most of the time these drop during months with good RPM. I don't see many ''updates'' dropping during the likes of Janurary and February, when RPM is low. Wonder why? Its obvious really. Also this past weekend was St Patricks day. They also release these annoying and increasingly frustrating ''updates'' during these kind of events. To, once again, capitalize on consumers spending during holidays and increased ad rates.

Plain and simple Google only care about themselves. They are a pure greedy profit machine with no interest in what their viewers want or need. I continue to see empty articles with little information at the top of the SERP. No one wants this. The company are useless and need to move out already!

[mhansen]

re: Google wants everything for itself

Funny, yeah... really not funny - See Barry's recent look (SER link below) at the new SERP layout with AI overviews. Almost all links within the AIO simply go back to another Google search page instead of the manufacturer or website (Even though those are the anchor texts).

I clicked on one of the Youtube videos, and it opens in a popup of sorts, the video autoplays (I have autoplay turned off by default), and every link on the popup is either back to a Google search, or directly to their paid product listings.

[seroundtable.com ]

[EditorialGuy]

As Google rolls out its first core update of 2025, I wonder - has anyone ever (or at least in the past couple of years) experienced an increase in traffic, improved traffic relevance, improved conversions or higher user engagement as a result of a core update?

We had a significant jump in Google traffic during the November Core Update. Not enough to make up for losses during previous updates and Google's introduction of AI results, though.

[ichthyous]

Funny, yeah... really not funny - See Barry's recent look (SER link below) at the new SERP layout with AI overviews. Almost all links within the AIO simply go back to another Google search page instead of the manufacturer or website

I prefer that...I think that if people are actually searching for a product or a service they are going to bypass the AIO snippits and continue on to the organic results. I would worry more if those links linked out to my competitors. Having said that...USA traffic has been unusually low recently. The rest of the world is making up for it. I literally just got a large order from South Africa, so I am hoping that if the USD keeps dropping that more foreign customers will emerge again. The high USD has kept them away for years.

[christianz]

As Google rolls out its first core update of 2025, I wonder - has anyone ever (or at least in the past couple of years) experienced an increase in traffic, improved traffic relevance, improved conversions or higher user engagement as a result of a core update?

Yes, but that was long time ago, more than 12 months ago. Since Q4 2024 not a single positive update.

[richinberlin]

I am seeing armageddon for anything AI, replaced with non AI, but lower quality results.

eg. Babynames sites

Sites that used AI to write longer descriptions are gone.
Sites that list celebrities with a baby name remain, but if you used AI to write a 3 sentence bio fo the celebrity, you are gone.
So arguably, better, more useful sites have been penalised.

I am seeing the same with large directory sites, that use AI to write a short summary of the business after scraping the site content, and then summarising.

Basically, if AI can be detected as unhumanised, its getting a "delete this site" mark, even if its objectively more useful than what now replaces it.

It looks like a business decision by Google.

a. Google does not want to have to index and store AI scaled sites. It's too costly.
b. Why index AI results, when instead, you can make people come to Google, perform the query there, and have the AI result built on the spot for you negating the need for people to go to the website, and instead, they have to use Google, and get more chance of seeing ads?

[Micha]

And how do you explain that more and more websites with clearly AI-generated content can be found at the top of Google's list? Inidatimes is one example, and the number is growing in Germany, too.

[richinberlin]

Because its AI written, not AI scaled.

I can build a 150k baby names site in a day, by simply running a scraper, finding names, getting AI to write al the content.
I can create a directory the same way, scraping Google maps, then using AI to write descriptions.
AI scaled is hit badly, AI written, less so, especially if the AI written has a small amount of human editing.

[Conro]

In my opinion it's just a coincidence, look at the Google index, most of the sites have nothing to do with the query made. Use Bing with the same query and the difference is huge and obvious to everyone. Google probably wasn't that badly reduced even as soon as it came out in 1998. But in the end it's normal, if you penalize almost all the sites you have to plug the holes in the serp with related topics, not those that answer the query

[christianz]

Basically, if AI can be detected as unhumanised, its getting a "delete this site" mark, even if its objectively more useful than what now replaces it.

If few paragraphs of AI text are supplemental to some other real content then Google must not penalize pages for simply having some words generated by AI. Or they could penalize them for keyword stuffing, which is why that text would most likely be there anyway.

If AI generated paragraphs are the main content, then Google should remove those pages and never index again. Because there is no place for AI generated second order derived "content" in search engine index. It is waste of space.

I keep my sites 100% free of AI generated stuff.

[Micha]

Great, I threw a text of mine into some AI detector tools for fun and out came: So I am an AI. The detection is flawed, so it automatically hits websites that don't rely on AI. But that would explain why the brand name has become so important to Google. Oh, and while we're at it: there seems to be a big drop today, the numbers are extremely bad on all the websites I'm watching.

[richinberlin]

Google is not using #*$! detectors. It will have its own. I have 60 location based sites in a niche, all scaled content, those with what I thought had high quality AI content, are dead. Those with much thinner, but not AI content, are alive and well. The AI sites were objectively a better user experience.

[ichthyous]

Oh, and while we're at it: there seems to be a big drop today, the numbers are extremely bad on all the websites I'm watching.

USA traffic has been abysmal...I'm starting each day at -70% now. Canada traffic is the worst I have ever seen, but it was also bad in 2024. Australia takes turns dropping off completely every other day. If I look at the trend lines I can clearly see that my USA traffic has been waning since around Feb 5th...another big drop around Feb 25th. But overall, still much higher than last year at this time.

I'm also back to losing all the terms I gained in one quick shot last month...the cycle is very quick now. You gain a ton over 7-10 days, then you lose them all again.

The lower traffic is not only the effect of AI overviews, but also of the fear and anxiety unleashed by the current US administration. People and companies are clearly hunkering down for a recession already and they are preparing for a lot of chaos. Fewer consumers and businesses looking to spend right now.

[universenet]

[reuters.com ]

Google, Apple hit by EU regulatory crackdown

[mosxu]

AI Mode

Anyone has early access how is the own brand getting presented?

[universenet]

First thoughts: Reuters.com looks like a dog #*$! straight out of the early 2000s! You’d think Reuters,

Saladtosser
this news are everywhere ( not only reuters), it is just part of plan from past and will start stronger soon
I am not worry much because I do not live from internet, I am living with Penguins on
Antarctica

[Whitey]

@universenet - thanks for the heads up. I pushed an OP over here, due to it's significance:

[webmasterworld.com...]

[Micha]

The lower traffic is not only the effect of AI overviews, but also of the fear and anxiety unleashed by the current US administration.

I'm really glad I don't live in the US, Google's AI nonsense, the government, etc. are really not good conditions for a web store owner.

However, what you describe sounds exactly like what I see on my websites

[insideout]

The traffic of all my websites is going from bad to worse !... I've spent almost a year trying to improve my website (with new design, better content, better structure etc..) but it looks like it's not enough for the damn google… I think it's game over!

[Conro]

@insideout I too, the exact same situation as you, I checked all the articles except the news, improved even if there was no need, almost a year of work that I could have dedicated to doing something else. Looking then on Google search console I have fewer and fewer inbound links because many sites have closed or Google has deindexed part of their pages. It all leads to a loss of traffic. There seems to be no way out

[EliZha]

The traffic of all my websites is going from bad to worse !... I've spent almost a year trying to improve my website (with new design, better content, better structure etc..) but it looks like it's not enough for the damn google… I think it's game over!

That's the same on my sites.
What niche? Would you like to share?

[Martin Ice Web]

The traffic of all my websites is going from bad to worse !... I've spent almost a year trying to improve my website (with new design, better content, better structure etc..) but it looks like it's not enough for the damn google… I think it's game over!

quality doesn´t matter no more.
And i would like google to keep GSC clean.
Since month there are errors reported that have been fixed.

Rising "found" but not "indexed" pages.
And going deeper into found/not index google says this pages are not in sidemap. That is truely wrong.

I guess they need the power for their AI instead of keeping their index clean.

[Micha]

Apart from what Martin says (and he's right about that), the biggest joke is that Google wrote about the current update that it focuses on good content. And what is the update showing us at the moment? Small, good websites are collapsing, and big names with bad content are winning again. You can't believe the company anymore, they're just mocking us. But let's be honest, giving up is not an option, is it? I've thought about it, but it's my passion. And I'd rather find a way that works and lets me give the finger to Google.

[Martin Ice Web]

today at 12am just another round kicked in. Very sharp drop. I don´t think that we will reach 40% of usual traffic today.

Sers are realy a pretty mess. google ignores completly some query keywords and returns not even close results.
But ads are again laser sharp focused.

[BigKat]

I've spent almost a year trying to improve my website (with new design, better content, better structure etc..)

Unfortunately none of this matters when Google's AI Overviews is the one serving users with content they harvested from all of our pages. Elsewhere, others are noting a big uptick in AI Overviews which is most likely the reason why traffic continues to get worse. As we all know, it's common for Google to use "algo updates" to hide other things they do with search to deprive traffic to organic results. That's most like the case for this core update as well, and when it ends most will have less traffic even if their ranks improved.

[NickMNS]

@insideout

I've spent almost a year trying to improve my website (with new design, better content, better structure etc..)

Same here.
I had a site that never got much love from Google. So I stopped updating and maintaining it. Then over the pandemic, I started to see the traffic grow slowly but steadily, it wasn't great but growing. So in the fall of 2023, I was between projects, so I decided I should try to revamp the site. By this point all the data on the site was old, most of the functionalities were broken, but still traffic was growing. I figured that making the site better would at worst keep me on the same track. I spend nearly 9 month rebuilding the site from scratch. I added new features, new modern UI, interactive tools, the works. A few days after the launch all the traffic was gone and it hasn't returned. The few users that land on the site, use it, and even come back, but it's not enough.

The site needs constant data updates which is costly and time consuming, and without any sign of traffic it has become utterly pointless. I haven't updated the site since a few month. Google has been sending traffic mostly to a single page, but guess what? Now that the data is starting be outdated, after the last update I've seen traffic to a few others pages. But again not enough.

In contrast, my main site does get good traffic, and it hasn't been updated since 2018, so again it looks old and the data is getting (or is) stale, but the traffic keeps growing. F! the users, I ain't touching it, the risk is simply too high. In 2018 when I last updated it, the site took a dive, and it took years to recover.

My conclusion is that the best SEO tactic these days is to operate and old site that doesn't require any updating. Get ever-green content, publish it once, and never touch it. Then over time Google will send you traffic, no matter how crappy the site is. The opposite, updating your site is a guarantee to loose all or most of your traffic.

Incentives moving forward... zero!

[EditorialGuy]

But let's be honest, giving up is not an option, is it? I've thought about it, but it's my passion. And I'd rather find a way that works and lets me give the finger to Google.

I continue to believe that there's an opportunity for a search engine that focuses on the vast resources of the open Web. As Google retreats into its walled garden, will a startup come along to fill the gap?

[BigKat]

will a startup come along to fill the gap?

If it does, it will have to originate from outside the USA which I'm perfectly fine with. To think both Google and OpenAI had the audacity to ask the USA Government to permit them to scrape copyrighted works, and consider it fair use to train their AI, is just mind blowing. One comment I saw from a story regarding this sums it up perfectly:

“That iron-clad commitment to protecting the rights of owners of work they themselves created is precisely what distinguishes the United States from communist China, not the reverse.”

[renatovieira]

BIG drop today...

[ichthyous]

Oh yeah, traffic was zooming an I was in the green today until 1pm. Then traffic dropped off a cliff at 1pm and has stayed very low for four hours straight so far

[MayankParmar]

My URLs have stopped getting indexed. The console says the URL is on Google, but it does not show up. It shows up after 3-5 hours, then it disappears again and shows up after a day. and all the time console says URL is on Google.

Crawling is fine. Everything is normal. What am I supposed to do?

[goodoldweb]

Stagnation continues. Top positions for our keywords (country wide), adwords campaign running. Nothing but zombies, Dead as, 0 sale, 0 enquiries the entire week.

Yes we did try a number of test purchases, the website works fine, the traffic is sick as.

It's mind boggling.

[Micha]

Well, I'll join in, today was a disaster. Ranking is stable, but hardly any traffic from Google, only zombies above the ads and the best: according to statistics, most of today's visitors came from the US, even though the site is only designed for the German-speaking area. Sale = 0

At least the news page was stable, but only old articles.

[renatovieira]

@ichthyous - Exactly the same over here!

[KaseyM]

Continued decline here. Google Discover is at anemic levels of growth, with my personal feed only displays about 4-6 websites at an absolute maximum.

Theory: Google is prepping for a future where it's clear it's only going to pay select publishers for the right to their content and they're doing a cleanout of the people at the bottom now.

[Conro]

I'm checking out a very good technology site, really well done and with an experienced team that has been collapsing for about a year. It should still make 300000 visits a day, how could I think that my site can survive if Google is destroying a pillar.

[Martin Ice Web]

further drop this morning while our rankings are getting better. I can´t see anything good going on with this core update. Not for users nor for webmasters. Only one is winning is google again.
Sales yesterday down 50%. Today started with ZERO.
Traffic over the day is very inconsistant. Seems to be owed by switching datacenters. One hour there is (rubbish ) traffic the next our traffic has vanished completly.
As this forum is very quiet, i makes me think that this update is related to spezific (Shop) webistes.

@micha, foreing traffic is growing especially from india and US ( some of them are bots/spiders ). And i don´t get it, that google is not able to cut them out of their system.

[Micha]

@martin You describe exactly how it is going in my business today. What is striking, however, is that Google sends more and more visitors to the website who visit the website and then immediately leave again.

News site: Search Console data shows that the main category has lost a huge amount of impressions since Wednesday. So Google is definitely sorting out. And if anyone tries to tell me again that articles have to be of high quality and offer added value for readers to rank well, I'll flip out.

[renatovieira]

Veery slow this morning...

[mosxu]

AI does not bring traffic we are the slaves