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]

[ichthyous]

Really strong links are not that easy to get. Most SEOs are therefore well paid to place links on rather small websites that have little effect because they let their clients believe that this works.

I have been successful over the years, it takes a lot of patience and research and I think my field makes it a bit easier. I pay for access to some platforms and add links from there. I add nofollow links from high DA sites too...they don't work as well as dofollow but every link helps. It's a part time job.

In the end I am finding that people who want FAST answers to questions read the AIO snippits. People who want How To articles will find those as well, or watch a video. But my customers are still skipping all of that because they want a solid, reputable site that sells them the product they are looking for. Now if we can only get the political chaos to stop causing the market chaos, which in turn is going to cause a global recession soon and then it really won't matter how you rank at all for 2-3 years.

[Martin Ice Web]

It is getting worse day by day.
Update (or new update) is still runing.
Whatever this update is for but it is in favour of non SEO websites, low to no descriptions, outdated Design, full of HTM Errors,
Sites that i, as a user, would never consider as High Quality Sites.

[Cryogen]

It is getting worse day by day.
Update (or new update) is still runing.
Whatever this update is for but it is in favour of non SEO websites, low to no descriptions, outdated Design, full of HTM Errors,
Sites that i, as a user, would never consider as High Quality Sites.

Yes, I'm seeing significantly lowered traffic and it's getting worse each day.

It seems my site was hit only now with whatever it was that G cooked up in their kitchen in the beginning of March when many people reported losses.

I think Micha is right in saying that G made roughly two sets of sites, one that gets a relatively normal/decent traffic and the other that gets totally #*$!ty traffic. And they'll keep swapping these two sets of sites, maybe to maintain an illusion that things will/might get better. Very bad update indeed.

[ubound]

My site got hit by something last weekend. The good thing is, I don’t have much to lose anymore, so I’m not stressing about it.

[Micha]

I really can't keep up anymore. First heavy traffic, then suddenly stop and nothing works anymore. Then heavy traffic again, only to come to a complete standstill the next day.
And I can confirm what Martin says, the results here in Germany are now mostly just outdated nonsense that breaks every Google rule, or Tagesschau, Spiegel Online and flyers from supermarkets (in Discover today).

If the politicians don't finally crack down, it will soon be over and Google will have completely destroyed the Internet as an economic area for small gamers.

@martin Do you think this is an update? It seems to me that Google leaves everything to its AI, which would explain the daily changes.

[Martin Ice Web]

@Micha,

ranking itself is pure algo. No AI. AI maybe used for guessing what the user is searching for.
There has allways been rerankings within a few weeks.after core updates while they try to (understand ;) ) refine the algo.
But this ups and downs are more than we have ever seen after core updates. So i guess some ohter update was started with or after the core.

And with all the ads and picture and video a.s.o. the results are nearly unreadable. Bild online in comparison looks clean to google result pages. And that is realy not an easy thing to manage.

[universenet]

what's going on in this forum? no one likes google anymore?

[Micha]

@Universenet Give me one reason why anyone still thinks Google is great. The company is on a path to destruction, nobody can like that.

@martin a spam update would probably be. The last few didn't cause as much volatility, but also put a lot of nonsense at the top.

[Martin Ice Web]

@Micha, could be. If AI is involved in this mess. they would be high recommended to push the kill switch.

[mosxu]

There is no traffic we all ned to jump ship now.

[gatormark]

It's a little brutal for me as well. Between AI and Google devaluing my sites (I don't know why) in search results, my impressions in 2 months have gone from 380,000 a day to 280,000. Organic clicks have gone from 16,000 a day to 9,000. Pages that have ranked high for over a decade suddenly got demoted one or more pages down. Even AdSense traffic has decreased. All of this started around February 13. I can no longer live on my website income. I hope something is left when I retire in 3 years, but I am not optimistic.

[gatormark]

I have many pages consistently ranked 2nd in Google SERP that haven't received any clicks since AIO hit our sector.

[Micha]

This is becoming intolerable: Google argues that the US government's measures constitute an “unjustified sale of intellectual property”. Google too: Last month called on the US and UK governments to change copyright law to allow its AI to use the entire internet for free. So your own intellectual property is important, but when it comes to the intellectual property of others, it should be ignored.

Source: [x.com ]

[Conro]

They just need something official, which allows you to copy anything, not just text, but also software, music, movies, etc. The problem is that there are AI who already do it , it's over for us.

[Conro]

There's something wrong with this Forbes article, I don't see why I should force myself by relying on randomness to receive poor traffic from artificial intelligences like Google's, I don't see how I can guess an article that AI can consider USEFUL (does it remind you of anything?). In short, it is better to think of something else, but without sites the AI are dead. Here is the article, I apologize to the administrator if you can't link, in case he can delete [forbes.com...]

[ichthyous]

Something changed this past weekend for sure. My traffic was blitzed from the start of the last update until Saturday. It was silent, no new inquiries at all. Then it all reverted to the previous much higher traffic pattern overnight. Since then all of my traffic has returned from every region. New customers, sales, etc as if nothing happened. It's very hard to make a business when Google destroys your traffic for months at a time multiple times a year.

I have many pages consistently ranked 2nd in Google SERP that haven't received any clicks since AIO hit our sector.

I find this hard to believe. 2nd place and no traffic at all? I have dropped from 2nd to 12th for one search inexplicably and it isn't recovering...AIO results load at the top, then the how to articles, YouTube, etc.

Sometimes my site is last spot page one, sometimes first spot page 2 and it has knocked out 50% of the traffic. What kind of site do you have, informational?

[gatormark]

I find this hard to believe. 2nd place and no traffic at all?...What kind of site do you have, informational?

@ichthyous

Yes, this particular site has basic information. It answers a question like "How many..." Google has provided the same information in its AIO, so there's no reason for people to move past the AIO.

[Micha]

Today Google seems to have paralyzed the internet again. The store again only has “visitors” who stay on the website for 0 seconds and don't make any sales. Adword is just burning money again ...
And the other site is practically dead too. By the way, an update really seems to be underway, Semrush is showing strong movements for Germany. I'm beginning to wonder what else Google is actually doing apart from playing with AI and installing updates ...

[Conro]

It's Easter soon, when there are holidays Google always makes an earthquake in the rankings

[dolcevita]

In the past few days, CPC and RPM have once again been cut in half. Politics is definitely affecting us publishers more and more each day. I'm 100% sure of it.

[goodoldweb]

Today Google seems to have paralyzed the internet again. The store again only has “visitors” who stay on the website for 0 seconds and don't make any sales. Adword is just burning money again ...

Same here. Nothing but deadbeat traffic the last few days. Heading to stop all adwords campaigns, they're nothing but a waste of money when this happens.

It's Easter soon, when there are holidays Google always makes an earthquake in the rankings

Google never fail to disrupt and destroy our business at the worst possible moment — just when we can least afford the chaos. Disruptive little tyrants.

[EditorialGuy]

In the past few days, CPC and RPM have once again been cut in half. Politics is definitely affecting us publishers more and more each day. I'm 100% sure of it.

Politics, or economic uncertainty? Whatever the cause, our own page RPM has been in the doldrums for a while now. I'm just surprised that Google traffic for our U.S.-based international travel-planning site has been climbing sharply in the last few days. Even if Google's algorithm is being nice to us for a change, I'd expect recession fears to put a damper on search demand.

[gatormark]

AIO’s just hit another one of my segments today. Wow.

[Conro]

Coincidentally where they have published Aio the serps are the most messed up, so users will get used to using Aio. I now predict that with AIO, Google will publish a search bar to continue getting answers from that low-value dustbin they call artificial intelligence. Obviously Google will not owe anything to anyone, after it has used your content to train its artificial stupidity, it has covered your site with banners that make you earn 4 pennies, after he exploits your good faith to earn money on your work (content is King :D)

[Martin Ice Web]

@micha

The store again only has “visitors” who stay on the website for 0 seconds and don't make any sales.

Sounds like bots. Did you make a reverse DNS lookup? There are many bots from US, China, Singapore and India right now.
Look at your log files and scan for IPs with multiple "get " over a longer period without having a referer.

[Micha]

@martin Some bots, but not many. I suspect that Google did not deliver the ads to the target group we specified, which led to numerous incorrect clicks. This started four days ago, the very day we suddenly had no more conventions through Adsword. In any case, Google has once again affected our Easter business.

[BigKat]

@Conro

We're in ecom and while Google has lifted our site's info for their AIO, that info doesn't apply to the ads Google displays. The ads on Google are mostly the same low quality offshore products that have been rebranded with so many different "brands" it's difficult to count - but they all look the same. I've heard others describe Google as a Dollar General search engine before for product searches, and it really makes sense because Google displays what makes Google money and little else. Shoppers are taking notice as I can see orders increasing from other sources. At least Temu appears to have stopped their shopping ads, and I hope Amazon does the same.

[Micha]

I wouldn't have thought it: A US federal court has ruled that Google has illegally established and maintained a monopoly in the field of advertising technology. So the air is slowly getting thin for Google
[themirror.com ]

[Whitey]

@Micha I just opened a thread over here [webmasterworld.com...]

It will be interesting to see how the current Trump administration interacts with these big tech rulings and investigations.

[Conro]

Page 404, however now Google is getting what it deserves. If Chrome sells, those who buy it will be able to put the default search engine they prefer (I hope not Google), if they will also take away the monopoly of advertising from Google, perhaps not only will websites regain visibility, but they will be able to have different sources of income without Google being able to put its nose in it