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]

[Fluff_Nutz]

February saw a good month for me and the site. Revenue was +30% and overall traffic was +11%. Sadly all that growth has now been lost. For some reason all of my good and popular articles have disappeared into the abyss. Ranking problems?. Which is funny as these article were not touched for a good few weeks. Signs of an update maybe? It is now March. Time for good RPMs to kick in so, of course, G will capitalize on that.

My traffic and revenue is back to December levels of terrible. Really wish I could grow this damn thing big G. Tired of this rigged game of spending money, creating content and getting sweet f-all for it.

As for my Youtube channel. It too saw a trending video, which only lasted a single day. Though growing either platform often feels more like a chore, complete with headaches. The Youtube channel still remains to be the most consistent. I can leave it for months and still return to the same traffic figures. Same cannot be said about the site.

[RedBar]

Global site traffic Feb 25 was 99% of Feb 24, second half of the month was definitely better than the first two weeks.

[mosxu]

The traffic in the last few days was not worth a single penny

[makintocheplus]

If Google updates are consistent we should see a core update in a few days.
My site is alive with bing traffic, I receive ~40 clicks daily from Google (consistent).
Also lot of people use my website's search feature and I can track the searches using the plugin Relevanssi.
I have big hope for the next core update as I updated all my old content and re organized my site for better UX.

[EditorialGuy]

Lots of bounciness for us. January was looking good, February was a mixed bag, and today is so-so so far.

If Google updates are consistent we should see a core update in a few days.

We did well in the November update, so I'm crossing my fingers for the next one, although I'm not expecting much. It does feel like Google is coasting on the organic-results front as it bets the farm on AI.

[makintocheplus]

It does feel like Google is coasting on the organic-results front as it bets the farm on AI.

I agree with you, maybe Google knows what they are doing to get better stock price (pump more ads, make people search multiple times due to bad SERPs, ...) but lot of websites recovered after they updated old content.

[renatovieira]

Massive drop this morning...

[ichthyous]

Massive drop this morning...

Traffic is just weak in general these days...Saturday very low, Sunday very low 1st half of day, then caught up 2nd half of day...this morning very low again. Countries take turns disappearing...Canada and Australia can be -60% certain days. Same with EU countries. The whole traffic pattern feels very blocked up and unstable.

Meanwhile...not one new serious inquiry since around February 16th again. Only spam and poor quality gibberish inquiries. They are reporting that USA GDP might go negative in the 1st quarter for the first time in years...gosh, I wonder why?

[christianz]

If you're wondering where you traffic went... [x.com...]

The so-called "brand authority" should be entirely removed from ranking criteria, if Google wants to produce decent SERPs.

[Shepherd]

The desperation is real. The most telling thing about this, for me, is that it really shows how low their advertiser pool has gotten. I mean, if the had a decent volume of advertisers they wouldn't have to show the same ads 3 times on the page, right?

[x.com...]

[Micha]

I still don't understand what Google is up to. My news page has been almost dead since the end of February, with a complete drop in ranking and a total crash in traffic from Google.
I see similar things happening to many other websites, all crashing, even though they provide really good content. I'm now hoping for a core update, because it can't get any worse.
Shop: Well, sales are being made again, but only because of the advertising. Without it, there would be zero traffic from Google. And sales are still 60% lower than last year.

[EliZha]

Affiliate site, huge drop in the past 1-2 days; [prnt.sc...]

site just recovered during Dec 2024 update :/

[ichthyous]

Traffic is atrocious and getting worse...yesterday search was -15%, today -20% so far. It just fell off a cliff at 9am and never recovered. All regions are participating:

The United States
-28%
The United Kingdom
+2%
Spain
+177%
India
+54%
Canada
-54%
Australia
-14%
Germany
-14%
Brazil
+105%
France
-49%
The United Arab Emirates
-49%

My Canadian traffic was already bad in 2024, but this year it's less than half of what it used to be. Australia and Germany also very low all the time now.

[Dooku]

Traffic is atrocious and getting worse.

The lemon has been squeezed all there is.......now G is running the pulp through the press :-)

It looks like currently the race is on between the AI mass content spammers and G trying to catch the traffic and send it to their own properties and "brand authority" buddies.
I am not mad any more at the AI spammers, let them grind the G SE down to a halt........

[insideout]

Mine is completely dead

[prnt.sc ]

[saladtosser]

The normies who don't normally even mention Google are starting to notice [youtu.be...] really good take on the situation!

[edited by: not2easy at 12:02 pm (utc) on Mar 12, 2025]

[rustybrick]

The funny thing is, that guy in the video did link building at the start of his professional career.

[BigKat]

Traffic is atrocious and getting worse

Mine is completely dead

Traffic is bad for us too. I see Google posted today [blog.google...] they are expanding AI Overviews and also testing an AI mode tab. The expansion of AI Overviews is probably why we are seeing another big drop in traffic. I expect it to get even worse as more of our content gets assimilated into their AI responses so that we get no benefit from our work at all. Talk about the biggest heist in history...

[mosxu]

OMG no sign of decent traffic for 10 days now

[azlinda]

I'm in the dead pool also.

[ichthyous]

Traffic started out decently today but dropped severely at around 11am. There really hasn't been decent traffic since around Feb 16th. We had one good month in January and back to the same old tricks. This time international traffic is worse...Europe, Australia, Middle East all down dramatically. USA is about -10% today.

[Micha]

Store - Dead, in the Merchancenter you can see that there was a very sharp drop on Monday. The main keywords have all dropped because English-speaking stores have suddenly appeared. News page: suddenly the Discover traffic is back, but without it, it would also be dead, as the ranking has also dropped.

In general: It's not just my sites that are experiencing this, webmaster friends are seeing exactly the same thing. But nobody knows what exactly is going on or can explain it.

[christianz]

I am also witnessing a sharp drop over the past 2 days, like just about every honest small/medium publisher.

Reports of parasite SEO / authority abuse farms gaining rankings are very discouraging, but not surprising.

[BigKat]

Reports of parasite SEO / authority abuse farms gaining rankings are very discouraging, but not surprising.

IMO the drops in traffic for us the USA are purely AIO related. According to serp tools, the presence of AI Overviews increased a whopping 70.75% from March 5. That's where traffic is going, or shall I say where Google is keeping users instead of sending them to our pages.

[christianz]

@BigKat

Yes, AIO may be biggest contributor to this drop. But I am also noticing drop in rankings for everything other than top 3 positions, starting around same time.

[BigKat]

@christianz

Ranks don't matter for us because all the visible real estate is consumed by Google's AIO, ads and refinements. AIO, when expanded, can reach over 1,600 pixels on desktop. If you don't have AIO appearing for your keywords, consider yourself lucky (for now). At the rate Google is spreading AIO, it won't be long until organic results are entirely gone except in rare instances. Of course if you're targeting a country that prohibits AI in search, AIO doesn't apply. The UK for example, has about 1/3 of AIO as we do here in the USA.

[Dooku]

Not sure if this has been posted here already, but it's a very good description of what is going on with search and we might see a change in G's position sooner than we think:
[youtube.com...]

[BigKat]

@Dooku

Hadn't seen that video before, but agree with most of what's in it. The only problem I have with these videos about Google's decline is their overemphasis on blaming SEO. Google is a fundamentally different company from its early days when they made a fortune helping people find information online. These days Google makes a fortune hiding information online, to push ads, because their dominance affords them that luxury for the time being.

One excellent point in that video is how embedded into our digital lives Google is also having the dominant mobile operating system, web browser, online video, etc. All these data points allow Google to collect user data to better serve targeted ads or so they say. But what if that data is not used to show users the best ads but to hide the most relevant free results and to maximize ad clicks by not showing the most relevant ads? Are we to believe Google wouldn't do this, especially after they removed "don't be evil" from their code of conduct and more recently the removal not using AI for weapons and surveillance from their AI ethics policy? IMO nothing Google does or says should be trusted.

[delorean]

Guys, have you also noticed INDEXING ISSUES around MARCH 5, 2025? And it is still continuing. My newer posts are not being indexed.