April 2025 Google Search Observations

[Martin Ice Web]

worst ever update. Even worse than panda. Down to 25%.
And this update removed ALL converting traffic and hit 100% of our main selling sites.

Search Console is full of not existing errors. google is not able to recrawl the sites since month.


@Micha, i hope it stays this way for you.

[edited by: not2easy at 11:38 am (utc) on Apr 1, 2025]
[edit reason] New month, new thread [/edit]

[Martin Ice Web]

Yesterdays traffic was OK, still only 70%. In the late afternoon they used the axe. Started at 8pm. Completly down. Worst ever traffic. So we will not see the 40% today.
100% there is still an updated in progress.

add-on:
80% of the sites that google is "recomanding" in serps look like they are from the late 90s.
What about build a compelling website? What about EAT? What about Core Web Vitals?

[Micha]

@martin according to Semrush there are currently strong SERP fluctuations, looks like an update.
My news site was also affected, traffic has dropped again. The store has also seen a drop in traffic. But I would have been surprised if the upswing of the last few days had lasted any longer.

Oh, and EAT is a funny buzzword that Google just uses as an excuse and for “SEO experts” to have a reason to take money out of their clients' pockets.

[haramamba]

80% of the sites that google is "recomanding" in serps look like they are from the late 90s.

And with a bunch of html markup errors.

[universenet]

80% of the sites that google is "recomanding" in serps look like they are from the late 90s.
What about build a compelling website? What about EAT? What about Core Web Vitals?

Google want kill maximum number of websites posibble
This is reason why they display in random up websites what are not important but just for short time, this is diversion on internet, google is enemy of websites

[ichthyous]

Traffic has been atrocious since mid-February, but this latest March update also took a toll. I am seeing some terms that I was in the top 3 results and I am now #13. There is a different set of results there now, with some long time sites dropping off, others rising dramatically and some brand new sites at the top. Some articles are now just gone...they were ranking at the top for a year and now hardly any visits at all. This is not to mention all of the additional AIO results, local results, video results, social media post carousels, etc.

I have seen a sudden increase in traffic from ChatGPT recently...it has doubled from previous levels. Still not a big source of traffic compared to what I have lost in Google, but you can see that people are using it more.

[saladtosser]

Since governments/corporations seem to be loving the fact that AI can on the fly replicate/ripoff media (Images/Videos/Audio/Text etc) and can ignore any sort of copyright.

I'm wondering, if/when AI could replicate/Ripoff physical products from patents on the fly, such as nvidia chips and gucci bags, would these same governments and corporations still suggest copyright laws shouldn't apply for the sake of AI? To beat China to the bottom? We all know the answer, but makes you think why physical intellectual property should be protected by copyright but not non physical intellectual property...

[BigKat]

I'm wondering, if/when AI could replicate/Ripoff physical products from patents on the fly, such as nvidia chips and gucci bags, would these same governments and corporations still suggest copyright laws shouldn't apply for the sake of AI?

Larry Page, and his $100+ billion in personal wealth, recently formed an AI manufacturing startup named [aisecret.us...] Dynatomics. Whether Governments will accept copyright infringement may depend on how much those in power personally benefit from IP theft. You may want to read the Superintelligence Strategy [nationalsecurity.ai...] that Eric Schmidt helped author. There's a lot of doom and gloom in that report not just for publishers, but many other industries including manufacturing. Noted in the report is social safety nets around the world won't be able to handle the mass job losses that are on the horizon.

aisecret.us Larry Page's New AI Startup Dynatomics: Revolutionizing Manufacturing with AI Move over chatbots and self-driving cars, there's a new AI sheriff in town, and it's here to shake up the manufacturing industry. Larry Page, the co-founder of Google and a tech legend who's been flying under the radar since stepping down from Google in 2019, is making

[gatormark]

Between the uncertainty in the world economy with tariffs and the upheaval caused by AI, we are in an unprecedented new world. We have to figure out how to adapt. So far, I've got nothing. However, there has to be some historical precedent that will help us know, even a little, how to proceed.

[Astroadviser]

Will Google deindex all the pages where it detects AI (even a speck)?

[universenet]

[euractiv.com ]
France singles out digital services for EU’s tariff response

You can try ask gemini what know about your website, maybe you will be surprised, mostly gemini missing data about websites, like websites no exist, this is critical time, that monster google really want destroy free internet and they doing all in the name of "user experience"
and exactly how user experience can be good bad if your website is removed from search?
If you try talk with gemini about your website and ask subquestion maybe you will see deep empty in data from gemini, maybe even gemini will not know almost nothing about your website

www.euractiv.com France singles out digital services for EU's tariff response - Euractiv "We won't stand idly by, should we be unable to reach a fair deal,-ť EU trade chief Maroš Ĺ efÄŤovič said.

[Conro]

@universenet Even in February the European Union threatened important measures against big tech, even in March, even this month, meanwhile they have not done anything yet and online companies because of Google are going bankrupt

[Micha]

@conro Measures have already been taken, but not as comprehensively as necessary. Google has an extremely large number of lobbyists in Brussels and they have somehow not yet realized how much this company is damaging the market in the EU. But something is happening (not least thanks to the nonsense that the US president is currently spouting). A billion-euro fine for X is currently being discussed and Google's AI search is also being targeted. In addition, a special levy on US tech giants is currently being considered.
However, I wish more politicians in our country finally had the courage to bang the table (although I'm sure nothing will happen in my country because we're currently ... oh, let's not go there).

[Conro]

@Micha Unfortunately, in general, they have made big tech do too much, but the worst thing is that in Europe it seems that they always want to block European companies to make room for American ones. That is, in Europe they really don't know how to create a decent search engine or a social network or a site where you can upload video? Come on, I can't believe it

[Micha]

@conro There was everything, MyVideo, Metager etc. The only problem is that they were cut out of the market by Google. But you're right, pool politics is overstretched, at least the part that has a powerful voice (or they get money cases, as the case may be)

[goodoldweb]

Talk about total control, anyone tried sending emails from thier web server exchanges to Gmail addresses? And i mean customer order receipts, shipping notifications, invoices, subscribed shop newsletters. They all go into a black hole on the Gmail exchanges or marked as spam.

We've added the required DNS entries as required by Gmail, our shop is not spammy by any way, YET Google actively stops our emails, activly interfering with our communications with our customers.

The only thing that eventually worked was to create a gmail account for the shop and then use the Gmail smtp servers to send customers comunication. That was the only way for our webshop to reliably reach our customers via email.

And now Google tell us they want to actively run through our emails to train thier AI (!?).

We tried everything, we do not want to use other thierd party smtp servers. Unfortunately most our shoppers, you guessed it, use a gmail email account. Checkmate.

Go figure how many websites they've choked just like that, forcing those websites to use ads, by stoping them from sending valid communication to their customers/subscribers. What a terrible company mentality.

[Micha]

@goodoldweb: Fortunately, we don't have any issues with that. But we advise our customers not to use GMail (just as we advise against using Chrome).
But you're right, many websites have these issues. Google's policy on email is quite curious. As for Google's announcement, I believe that the AI that reads emails is not at all compatible with the GDPR.

And now for the numbers: Friday was a very quiet day, but last night Discover traffic returned and the store has also seen good traffic from Google (i.e. shoppers) since then.
I think the change Google News made was good for the news site. Why the store is suddenly doing so well after two disastrous months is a mystery to me though, but of course I'm not complaining.

[goodoldweb]

@Micha

Our orders are more or less back to normal.

As for smtp, the server we are hosted on hosts 400 more websites. If one of them spam then the entire host ip has a good chance of ending on black lists. As for asking customers not to use gmail, unfortunately most of them do, they have android devices, so they must have one by default. Hard to convince them otherwise. Unfortuantly Google are too good at rounding up the web. Hence why it must be broken to littel pieaces.

As i said, once we started using Google's smtp servers everything was fine. Mission accomplished as far as Google are concerned.

[Micha]

@gooldoldweb I'm glad to read that things are back to normal for you. I hope you can now catch your breath a little.

About SMTP: Let's call a spade a spade: Google is a market-dominating monster that pretends to want to make people's lives easier, but in reality only uses its power against other companies. It is essential that the media report on this much louder and more relentlessly so that the general public is educated and a change in thinking takes place.

[insideout]

@universenet I asked the gemini about how reliable my website is and got this answer:
___
Based on the available information:

xxxxx.com appears to be a reliable resource for information and comparisons related to web hosting. Its content seems current and aims to provide valuable insights for users.
xxxx (the hosting company) seems to be a reliable hosting provider with a long history, a solid infrastructure in France, and a range of features designed for performance and stability. While their uptime guarantee is standard, other aspects like their datacenter, redundancy measures, and customer support contribute to overall reliability.
___
As you can notice, gemini associated my website with a hosting company that we don't even list on our website !
Even though Gemini considers our website to be reliable, it was hardly hit by the last update and lost more than 45% of its traffic. It keeps going down. google wants to kill websites focused on providing information, comparisons, and reviews related to any niche.

[ichthyous]

Traffic is absolutely atrocious this entire weekend, but really took a steep drop today. Search is off by 29% this morning with USA -59% and UK at -24%. Traffic has been deteriorating since the start of the March update, with some pages losing traffic in one steep drop and the rest continuing to lose traffic like a deflating balloon. At this point I'm starting to cross under the level of traffic this time last year, and maybe one new inquiry in the last ten days. Business is effectively at zero.

[universenet]

As you can notice, gemini associated my website with a hosting company that we don't even list on our website !
Even though Gemini considers our website to be reliable, it was hardly hit by the last update and lost more than 45% of its traffic.

insideout,
that is exactly result of google search today, totaly chaos, even AI ( gemini) does not know almost nothing normal about websites arroud, ok I can say that gemini personaly to me somtimes giving so stupid and unlogic answers that iritating me even, compare to chatgpt and deepseek, ah..it is big diferent

[delorean]

Google is so utterly selective. My new blog posts are indexed but now showing on search. All written by me, no AI. This started in March.

[mosxu]

@micha

Big tech are dangerously big and not honest, politicians are absolutely in the corporation’s pockets, we are being exploited!

No evidence on the clicks/views we pay for… and AI has stolen our content!

[RubicCubed]

No evidence on the clicks/views we pay for

Serious question. How can you continue to feed the beast money after it bit off both your arms? We quit giving money to Google a few years back because it was like giving an enemy of war all our weapons. As a shopper, I know anything I see in a Google ad has an inflated price to cover Google's extreme ransom fee which is why I avoid Google.

[not2easy]

Mods note

This forum is where we discuss Google Search and SEO. We do not discuss politics in any of our forums. No one comes here for the latest in politics, lets try to stay on topic.

[Micha]

@mosxu I'm aware of that, but you can hope a little. To be honest, I don't expect things to get better, but that we can somehow keep our heads above water, because the arbitrariness of Google and co. is omnipresent.

The best example of this is my news page: the last few days have been going really well, but on Sunday at around 6pm the Discover traffic suddenly collapsed completely, even though a few articles went online at that time that would have achieved very good click rates the day before. At the same time, sales in the store collapsed. Both continue to this day. Nobody can tell me that this is not arbitrary on Google's part, because there is no recognizable change on the websites and there was no update from Google. So there is no logical reason for this.

@not2easy I know and I'm sorry, but the political situation is important in this point, because action against Google also affects websites.

[ichthyous]

Is anyone else seeing drastic declines in search traffic this past week? My search traffic dropped 13% yesterday. UK was -60%, Australia -33%, Canada is -80% today. Traffic to my home page and my main landing pages are -23%, -31%, -43%, -53%, etc. This is drastically bad, but I don't see others really mentioning it. The problem appears to be that only 'How To' articles and videos are being pushed up to the top again...a repeat of 2022/2023? I'm now middle of 2nd page for searches where I was top 3 before the last March update.

[EditorialGuy]

No drastic declines in Google traffic here. Some days are up, some are down, and some are about the same. I will say that, to Google's credit, our busiest pages are now a little less random than they were for a while. But Google still has a lot of trouble distinguishing between s**t and Shinola, to borrow from an old saying. We're sometimes outranked by content-marketing pages or, even worse, affiliate or e-commerce pages even for non-commercial searches.

I'd have to say that, while we got a small but decent bounce in the November Core Update, the March Core Update was pretty blah (a couple of big spikes during the update period, but little impact overall). We're still down 60 to 70 percent from the same time last year, which stands to reason with AI Overviews and other Google search features taking over the SERPs.

[ichthyous]

We're still down 60 to 70 percent from the same time last year, which stands to reason with AI Overviews and other Google search features taking over the SERPs.

Holy cow! I'm still up on 2024, but soon I will be back to 2024 levels. UK is on Easter break and I get a lot of UK students, so that is part of it. But dropping from #2 to #13 for some of these searches is mostly it.

[mosxu]

It is all smoke!

@EG

If this forum would implement recaptcha would “you” still be able to post?