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]

[ichthyous]

Search was -7% yesterday and is -21% so far today. USA traffic is anemic at best for a month now. No inquiries whatsoever in a week. I'm seeing a huge decline in top ranking terms and also a big drop in ranking. I am seeing that how-to articles and guides are once again regaining all the top spots, pushing out most everything else except for Wiki, AIO, lists of people also asked questions, and now carousels of instagram posts, tweets, threads and other random and quite useless social media posts, and tons of Youtube videos. The page is so crammed with this crap that it is confusing and hard to find anything...a real mess.

[EditorialGuy]

Neither dramatically good nor dramatically bad here. Big boost in Google traffic on March 14 (Ihe day after the update began), with daily ups and downs since. The most extreme daily variations that I've seen have involved time on site and pageviews per visit.

[EditorialGuy]

Re YouTube videos: If U.S. and European governments are serious about encouraging search competition, they should forget about having Google sell off Chrome and require it to divest itself of YouTube instead. Deprive Google of having an incentive to display YouTube videos ahead of Web sites.

[mhansen]

Unfortunately none of this matters when Google's AI Overviews is the one serving users with content they harvested from all of our pages.

This is what I feel will be the death of anything with informational / educational value. Google is simply no longer a "Search Engine", it is a massive content farm that is presenting AI generated long-form content at scale, and providing attribution in such an insignificant way, users are not clicking through. (Regardless of Google saying they are)

I have a set of unique and well-built tools on my site. They REQUIRE user interaction in order for the person to come to a conclusion, and that user is looking for EXACTLY this type of tool when they type in a query. Google does not provide that tool, and instead, just rambles on about the few websites that do provide the type of tools (So and so offers a tool like this, another so-so offers a tool like this, etc) the user is looking for, then explains how they can do it manually instead of using the tool, etc. The AI overview they provide is almost always 1.5x the viewable screen height, followed by 3-4 ads, then a YouTube video related to the query, etc.

One specific page of mine that ranks in the top 1-3 position organic whenever I search for it anonymously, saw 5,931 impressions (GSC - 30 days) with an average position of 2.1 reported, got just 149 clicks. A whopping 2.6% click-through-rate. You have to scroll very far to ever find it, and as a business owner, you have to hope like hell a web user goes that far down and clicks on it. The data says they are not. 3 years ago, this same positioning would have resulted in 30-40% CTR.

Google, as a search engine is done. They are a content farm with the highest market share of any publisher in the world. Hopefully, some company comes along with a "Do No Evil" attitude and displaces them as an actual search engine.

[goodoldweb]

What is striking, however, is that Google sends more and more visitors to the website who visit the website and then immediately leave again.

@Micha

We are seeing the same phenomenon since that core update started. One page window shoppers that do not interact with the site.

What if the algo uses that behaviour as a page quality signal?

So now what? First they send the wrong traffic and then take note of a poor signal?

They've lost it.

[Whitey]

Google Search Central Live event in NYC: SEO for AI Overviews: Danny Sullivan’s Game-Changing Insights

I opened a thread over here as i thought it more appropriate from a focused learning and sharing POV. I hope it's helpful.

[webmasterworld.com...]

[haramamba]

@goodoldweb

One page window shoppers that do not interact with the site

Are they humans or just bots with fake referer?

[Micha]

Some of them are bots, others are probably misdirected users who were actually looking for something completely different.

@goodoldweb I'd rather not think about that.

@whitney, I wasn't there, but from what I've heard and read about the event so far, it can be summarized as:
AI above all, a lot of nonsense about Google News that anyone can see is simply not true, and a lot of “we like small websites”. The usual Google drivel.

[renatovieira]

Massive drop this morning. This update started out really well for me, but it's been reversed since yesterday.

[Conro]

From a question about "X" asked to searchliasion, it appears that by December 31, 2025, Google will commit to solving the drop in traffic that independent sites have faced, despite knowing that many of these sites had great content. I don't know about you, but I find it hard to believe it because there are all the assumptions that make me think the exact opposite, for example, the fact that many old forums they are practically everywhere or foreign subdomains that are poorly written because they are self-translated are well placed and the appearance of AIO that would take away all hope from anyone. I think the most sensible thing is to abbandono the site once you have done everything possible and if things really change start working on them again, otherwise you do nothing but feed their AI without anything in return

[RubicCubed]

Hopefully, some company comes along with a "Do No Evil" attitude and displaces them as an actual search engine.

Would there be many publishers left, still producing content, to make it worthwhile for an actual search engine to be born after Google has destroyed the open web? I think many of us are in various stages of contemplating the worth of our efforts and if it even makes sense to continue when Google is getting all the benefit. Like Conro's statement:

I think the most sensible thing is to abbandono the site once you have done everything possible and if things really change start working on them again, otherwise you do nothing but feed their AI without anything in return

If we can't earn from the investment we make in creating content, then we will all eventually abandon these futile efforts as Conro eluded to. Meaning there will be little left for a new search engine to crawl once Google has created a closed web that they and a few others fully control.

[mosxu]

AI overviews is like shooting themselves in the foot and they are doing this thinking they need to compete with Open AI , Deepseek

All I care is quality of the traffic I pay for! No zombies please!

[Fluff_Nutz]

Well I read that completely wrong. I originally had it at traffic no longer dropping by December 31st 2025. Meh, just me wishful thinking so much that my eyes are deceiving me. It's quite annoying as my site was doing really well this month. Now its down by 25-30%. My Youtube is, also, because of the SERP shuffle, loosing traffic too. No matter how much you try to diverse you cannot escape the Google hell.

Anyway it seems that some, not all, websites MIGHT be getting their lost traffic back after each update. With more sites seeing this happen throughout the rest of the year. December 31st will see the majority of sites seeing this. Supposedly. No chance of getting lost traffic from 2022 back for me then. Simply a restart. Again annoying.

[searchenginejournal.com ]

[EditorialGuy]

Anyway it seems that some, not all, websites MIGHT be getting their lost traffic back after each update. With more sites seeing this happen throughout the rest of the year. December 31st will see the majority of sites seeing this. Supposedly.

That sounds like a pipe dream to me, even if my site's rankings improved to where they were two years ago. With organic results shoved far down the page below Wikipedia-style AI essays, PPA questions, links to other search queries, YouTube thumbnails, etc., it seems almost inevitable that Google traffic to Web sites will be a smallish fraction of what it once was.

[londrum]

All our traffic has been diverted to Google, with their ads and AIOs and youtube and hotel and travel affiliate pages, and the only way they'll give it back is if the courts get involved

I think we have a better chance of getting our traffic back when they start losing market share to other search engines... but that isn't going to happen any time soon either. Certainly not by Christmas

[RubicCubed]

it seems that some, not all, websites MIGHT be getting their lost traffic back after each update.

Like Google has any credibility left to make such statements. Right now Google is rolling out more AI Overviews that are taking even more traffic away from publishers. It's been about 5 months since that creator summit and look at how badly those creator's sites have been pummeled into the dirt after Google sent creators home with an empty bag of hope.

I think the only reason Google makes these empty commitments/promises is so some publisher's keep creating content for them.

[goodoldweb]

They've rounded up the free internet using android, gmail, chromcast and chrom. There's nothing stoping Google now.

Never in the history of the world one company had so much devastating power over billions of businesses world wide. It's sickening.

@haramamba

Yes they look like human with Australian ip addresses and valid browsers. They just don't interact with the site. One page only and back to Google. Looking like accidental clicks. Adwords clicks are not much better.

Weekends are normaly our best selling days 15-20 orders website+ebay combined. This weekend 0 sales on the website, 1 sale on ebay. It's devastating.

[Micha]

@goodoldweb It is not true that no one can stop Google, at least not outside the US. Google may currently be a quasi-monopolist, but it is obvious everywhere that countries are trying to break its dominance. The EU has just taken a further step, Japan is also aware of the impact of Google (and other US technology companies) on its small businesses and is tightening measures ever further, and these are just two examples. In my opinion, it should happen faster, because many small businesses can hardly survive and I fear that many will not live to see Google being put in its place, but it will be put in its place.

But that also means that website owners should finally stop listening to what the people at Google say (most of it is complete nonsense anyway, I would even say “lies”), and also that they should finally stop pumping money into “SEO experts”. Besides, there are still too many who make excuses “it's the economy” etc. No, it's Google.

[Samsam1978]

I’m also struggling to understand Google's strategy with AI overviews. It must require significant energy and resources to power the data centers behind millions of scraped responses, which often feel unnecessary. This situation really doesn’t seem okay. Can someone clarify how Google is profiting from these AI-generated overviews? I know I lost adsense revenue so I don't get how they are making more or the same money?

[goodoldweb]

@Micha

Too late IMO, nothing can stop them at this stage, unless the company is broken and Google are forced to sell the ads department.

Any of this can take years to llegislate. It is up to us small businesses to lobby our governments hard.

[mosxu]

@goidoldweb

It is wrong for Trump to think that this company represents America and he needs it for economic success after all the banning and shadow banning!

We all know real buyers have left this company for Amazon and other brands!

And why do you think congress recommends selling off chrome ?

[goodoldweb]

Selling off chrom is a good start but simply not enough.

They have the android system, with users logged into their Google accounts on way too many devices around the world (conservative estimate after many years of looking at logfiles, 60%+ of devices).

Most of our customers use gmail, and are probebly logged into thier gmail account even when they use different browsers or operating systems.

Edge seem to log users into thier google accounts too for some reason, and I am not talking cookies, the browser actuly logs you in automatically once you log into your gmail or other google acount. Most users don't really care, but there you have it, total control.

[edited by: goodoldweb at 1:37 pm (utc) on Mar 23, 2025]

[RubicCubed]

It must require significant energy and resources to power the data centers behind millions of scraped responses, which often feel unnecessary. This situation really doesn’t seem okay. Can someone clarify how Google is profiting from these AI-generated overviews?

The datacenters used to power their networks are subsidized by taxpayers. For a 2018 Google datacenter in New Albany Ohio, where Intel is now building a chip factory, taxpayers forked over $1.4 million in tax dollars per job created according to: [dispatch.com...] In the same region (New Albany Ohio) the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) is also approving special discounted electricity rates for these datacenters which are paid for by other customers throughout the state who are billed higher rates to cover the discounts given to the datacenters. AI processing requires liquid cooling as well. As part of the $2.3 billion tax subsidies Ohio gave to Intel, $600 million in tax dollars will be used to help construct Intel's factory and another $700 million will be used by Ohio to build infrastructure including a water treatment facility. I'm not sure if Google's datacenters will utilize this water treatment facility, but it's a logical assumption all datacenters in that region will have access to a taxpayer funded supply of cheap treated water. To save processing power, I'm sure Google and others already have many AI responses cached to serve for simple searches like "why is the sky blue" and queries that require fact based responses.

You asked about how Google is profiting from these results, and I don't think they are yet. What Google is doing now is like building a road - tearing down trees, bulldozing the path in preparation to lay cement. We publishers are the trees being removed and path Google must clear. Once we are out of the way, cement may be poured and Google will have a clear road to use as they wish without any of us annoying publishers expecting to get free traffic to our pages.

It's criminal seeing these very wealthy companies get huge tax subsidies, to support the very AI that is stealing our content and eliminating our jobs, but that's the senseless world we live in. If the rapid expansion of datacenters were not subsidized by taxpayers, Google and others would have to slow their expansion plans which would be less disruptive to all publishers by smoothing the transition from organic results to AI Overviews. Looking at Semrush today, they are reporting the highest number of AIOs appearing in search ever. As more taxpayer funded datacenters come online, I believe we will see even more AIOs in search until AIOs become so common that Google eventually pulls the plug organic results altogether.

[Dooku]

This was the cause why all seo tools could not track rankings on March 19th:
[devakatalk.com...]

Also, with the lack of "maintenance" and not fixing all those bugs in GSC and all the parasite and DA abuse you can now safely expect google will not put any more time and money in the organic part of their search engine. All the road signs point to AI now and they build it with subsidies from tax payer money.....let that sink in.
(which would be impossible in the EU)

[ichthyous]

Also, with the lack of "maintenance" and not fixing all those bugs in GSC and all the parasite and DA abuse you can now safely expect google will not put any more time and money in the organic part of their search engine. All the road signs point to AI now and they build it with subsidies from tax payer money.....let that sink in.

It's clear that dominance in AI has been the goal for all of these companies for a while now. Search is the past, AI is the future...at least that is narrative that has been driving all investment now since ChatGPT was first introduced. Consider:
1) There is more and more competition in the AI space, so potentially less and less return on investment
2) Smaller, more nimble, and lower budget AI startups are making astonishing progress so just throwing $50-$80 billion at AI is not going to assure that Google, Meta, Amazon, MS are going to be dominating AI completely.
3) AI related stocks have sold off heavily...the shine has worn off already and the markets aren't seeing the return that was promised (yet)

I agree that Google won't be investing any more resources in old search, but it is by no means assured that AI will replace that lost revenue for quite some time, if ever...so Google is in a bit of a bind.

[Conro]

Have you noticed that if you ask the exact same question to different artificial intelligences, they all provide a very similar answer? Even in the order of the sentences that follow one another, as if they had a common basis, then they proceed with an adaptation. I find all this very strange.

[ichthyous]

Huge drop in traffic yesterday...search ended the day -24%. Big drops in traffic from all of the English language countries:
USA -14%
UK -17%
CA -11%
AU -40%

The very low traffic continues today with USA -34% at 11:30am.

[EditorialGuy]

Another point that needs to be made about surfacing "small independent sites" in Google Search:

The problem isn't just that Forbes, Reddit, etc. get prime placement in the SERPs, it's also that a huge percentage of sites are derivative and just not very good (whether they're churned out by AI or by human drones). Google needs to do more than promote "small independent sites": It needs to learn how to separate the wheat from the chaff.

[Micha]

But that is exactly the situation Google wants, so that users continue to use the search engine and Google can serve more ads. It can't be that the company has suddenly become so bad at recognizing garbage.

[BigKat]

But that is exactly the situation Google wants, so that users continue to use the search engine and Google can serve more ads. It can't be that the company has suddenly become so bad at recognizing garbage.

Unfortunately some still don't want to face this fact. That saying "ignorance is bliss" comes to mind, possibly because realizing Google has intentionally made search worse leaves little hope for the future.

Google spoke of turning off ranking improvements, adding refinements all over the search results, etc. to boost queries. We see the evidence of this in Google's search results today. As a reminder, that full court document can be viewed at: [justice.gov...]

We could increase queries quite easily in the short term in user negative ways (turn off spell correction, turn off ranking improvements, place refinements all over the page). If we, as a company, want to go there we should discuss that. It is possible that there are trade offs here between different kinds of user negativity caused by engagement hacking. But I will say that I am deeply deeply uncomfortable with this, and I'd be surprised if the ads team wants this. The nature of how you would easily increase queries is a key reason I don't like queries as an end metric. The easy ways are almost all bad. Having queries as a metric will, in my opinion, have a subtly bad effect as a launch metric even if we 'decide not to do the bad things'.

Google did the bad things, and the result is record profits for Google and much less traffic for us. The only good thing is there are competitors waiting to pluck off users who are just fed up with Google. I'm seeing signs that users are indeed leaving Google, but it's happening too slow to overcome the rate at which Google is taking our traffic away with AI Overviews.