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]

[Conro]

To me Google search console does not read the sitemap of a site correctly. I insert the sitemap and read it, but if I click on it it doesn't see the sub-sitemaps, such as post-sitemap.xml or category-sitemap.xml, it can only read sitemap_index.xml. This site has been driven to zero traffic, because Google doesn't want competition with affiliates. I don't understand if this problem with reading the sitemap is due to search console or is a sign of an algorithmic penalty, the fact is that the site has been deindexed, I only see 6 pages on Google

[Martin Ice Web]

@Conro, i said it before. I guess google needs all power for AI. Websites are more or less getting unimportant for search but for AI training.

[Micha]

@Corno Google ignores the sitemap anyway, it's just a “signpost”. What is important is how often Google crawls the page, and there have been repeated problems with many websites recently.
@martin, thanks, but I still don't think that this will last for long.

[Conro]

@Martin Ice Web I have been saying it for more than a year that hcu has to deal with useful content for artificial intelligence, the rest is no longer needed. Now it's all coming true with ai overviews in the foreground and users who will be increasingly discouraged from clicking on organic results. The next step? A nice forum, Google communities to ask new questions, in this way websites will be pushed even further down and will no longer need reddit. In the end, it will remain with the overview and the reddit-style Google community. Do we want to bet that it will go like this? This is at least for the informative content, but one day who tells us that Google could not also become an ecommerce like Amazon?

@Micha in other sites I don't have the problem of the sitemap, moreover Google doesn't even read it if I don't submit it. I'm afraid this site is completely hopelessly dead.

[Micha]

@conro My sitemap hasn't been read for months either. Unfortunately, with you it really sounds like the page is dead. But it's not likely to be the AI overview in the search, it sounds a lot like Google's arbitrariness with you.

[Conro]

@Micha Yes, this site is dead, it went to zero visits within 2 or 3 days because Google deindexed the pages. Generally I noticed that the sitemap is not read only when the site is never updated, but the site that died I followed every day publishing even 4 articles a day

[haramamba]

@Micha
My sitemap is being crawled 3 times per day. Submitted in GSC and linked in the robots.txt.

[Micha]

It's different for every site. I also have sites where the sitemap is updated daily by Google. But never for my news site, even though it's getting a lot of traffic from Google at the moment. As always, there's no logic behind it.

@conro I'm really sorry about that...

[gatormark]

There is no logic behind anything anymore. For the past decade, I could always predict which days of the week would have the highest traffic. Now, all of that has changed. I don’t know if it’s throttling or Google adjusting what they display each day (AI, images), but everything is upside down.

In February, I was up 15% in Adsense revenue over the previous year. This March I am down 3% in Adsense revenue over the previous March.

[Fluff_Nutz]

With a new month, comes new end of previous month results. March saw revenue increase by +34%. Making it the highest amount I have had in quite a while. Traffic also increased by 11%. Overall I am happy with this progress. Given the current situation and struggle. I have come to appreciate any and all growth. We also lost our top writer too, this past month. Whilst it was unfortunate. We do still have a good competent team.

We did get several articles trending. Most of which had videos to accompany these articles. Whilst they were doing really well, for a good few weeks in fact. we did get hit by the March ''update''. At one point our traffic was -40%. Once this apparently ''ended'' we got our traffic back. Thankfully. At least for now anyway. Alas, those articles still have yet to resurface. Disappeared in the ranking abyss for all eternity. This is also reflected on to my Youtube channel too. Huge drop around March 17th. During that time, the so-called ''update'' was still active.

As said before, we only drop when ''updates'' activate. It would be nice if these became less of a thing. Alas.. G just won't let anyone grow in peace. It's only thanks to a consistent and competent team do we still bring in any traffic. Also through diverse traffic. If I solely relied on Google the site would be dead.

I will also admit that, in my niche, we currently do not have an AIO. Though, I'm sure it will land eventually. At present, traffic is still going strong for the site. Thanks to new trending articles, made by my other writers. Though, come next ''update'' they, too, will likely disappear. In order to be given to G's favourite sites. Of course! You know the ones! Those sites written by AI and have one sentence or a single title. Authority reigns supreme on Google. Even if its an empty article. I'd like to think that, in time, I can snatch some of that authority for myself. So I don't get these huge ranking drops. Better yet, just stop these damn ''updates''. If I rank higher automatically, why can't I just keep it? Ranking is the worst thing for me right now. Same can be said on Youtube.

[engine]

Part of my general interest is in old movies: Recently, the results are proving to be inaccurate, with the wrong actors displayed. I only know that because i'm old enough to realise the error. Clearly, it's using AI, and it's showing, embarrassingly, for G. It's experimenting, instead of getting it correct.

[Fluff_Nutz]

I'm a huge fan of comic books. Came across a message in the AIO, apparently the Green Lantern's oath relates to Fear. Like what? So yes, its true. We are being replaced by incorrect AI garbage. If Google were smart and NOT blinded by greed. Then they would fix these issues before spiralling further into their on-going mess.

Also, just recently came across someone's message over on Reddit. Where Youtube is punishing those who use ad blocker. Stating that 'Video Player will be blocked'' if you continue to use ad blocker. Again first time I have come across it. But I would not be surprised if it was true. Greed drives Google. Not being smart or competent. It's laughable and beyond words.

[Micha]

AI answers are funny. My business partner has unceremoniously declared Google's AI dead because he mistook him for someone with the same name. And we'd rather not talk about the answers in the comic section, because there are so many wrong statements that it's terrible.

[ichthyous]

Just like clockwork...at 7am sharp traffic falls off a cliff every single day now and remains low the rest of the day. All of this has placed a big damper on business. I do wonder if the stock market drops and the political chaos are also contributing to the lower traffic. Canadian traffic is lower than I have seen in years...perhaps Canadians don't want to deal with US businesses now? Who can blame them!

[goodoldweb]

I'm a huge fan of comic books. Came across a message in the AIO, apparently the Green Lantern's oath relates to Fear. Like what? So yes, its true. We are being replaced by incorrect AI garbage. If Google were smart and NOT blinded by greed. Then they would fix these issues before spiralling further into their on-going mess.

@Fluff_Nutz

I was looking for a list of all movies played by Nick Nolte the other day. Google gave me a list of 15 movies, only 4 of them actually had Nick Nolte. The rest was total rubbish, nothing to do with Nick Nolte. It would have been quite funny if it wasn't so sad.

Google's AI is half baked junk not ready for prime time. Forget the embarrassment, it looks like Google no longer cares. I think we should have laws forbidding companies like Google the use of such disinformation tools or at least make them legally liable for the information they now provide.

Saying "the AI may be incorrect", yet featuring it prime time to serve 90% of the world's search market is negligent, some may even say borderline criminal. God knows what other information they now so badly skew.

If Google wants to directly provide the information than they should be held accountable for its accuracy, Whether they've used AI to generate the response content or not.

[Micha]

Saying "the AI may be incorrect", yet featuring it prime time to serve 90% of the world's search market is negligent, some may even say borderline criminal. God knows what other information they now so badly skew.

@goodoldweb But it's not just Google; the media are also failing to live up to their responsibility. Since Google's AI answers have been available in Germany, the topic has been on everyone's lips. However, what is rarely heard is criticism or a warning about the risks. In particular, high-reach media completely ignore topics such as “incorrect answers” etc. in their reporting.

[Conro]

I'm using semrush and I'm noticing that where aio appears, in the organic results the few remaining independent sites largely had a slump in March last year. Does anyone want to take a test and confirm?

[Martin Ice Web]

It is getting worse. Some queries in our niche produce serps where #1 hasn´t even a mobil site. Only desktop view. #2 and #4 are duplicate content from the same website owner (different domain). Complete same layout, text, design, products... 100% copy. Both are ranking in the top 5 for multiple queries.
And more to come: #4 and #5 are from same domain.

What is going on at the plex?

For everyone who are regarding google guidelines this is a deep punsh into the pit of the stomach.

[cooler29]

@Martin Ice Web "What is going on at the plex?"

Maybe they are experimenting. With drugs or something like that :)

[Mark_A]

What happened in March/April 2024?

Our site lost 50% of its Google sessions and views then and we haven't recovered.

Did anything major happen to Google then that you can recall?

Was it then that G started putting AI links at the top of the SERPs?

Something must have happened about then.

Anyone have any ideas?

Before anyone asks, I am also looking at the April thread [webmasterworld.com...]

[Micha]

@Mark_A As far as I can remember, there was an update. But we don't know what Google is up to anyway.

@martin the results for shopping are a disaster on Google at the moment, you can't find anything at all, but scams and spam without end. A little fun fact: the number of complaints from people in Germany who have fallen for fake stores is currently on the rise. We can imagine why that is.

However, I have to say that my news site and the store are up and running at the moment. Discovertraffic doesn't stop and the store finally has a reasonable daily turnover again. As for the news site, I think it's due to the change in Google News, because since then the latest articles on my site have been displayed on the “Sources” page on Google News.

[Mark_A]

Couple of posts from the April 2024 thread. One from you Micha

It seems there was an update around then.

With this update, Google has implemented three new spam policies targeting scaled content abuse, expired domain abuse, and site reputation abuse

While the first two policies were immediately enforced, the site reputation abuse policy will be effective starting May. [searchenginejournal.com...]

There seems to have been a Google algo update around April 9.

Micha
Result since Friday -56 per cent, unfortunately the trend is still downwards. As I am also currently monitoring my friend's online shop: it's exactly the same for him, -56 per cent since Friday, we no longer need to talk about sales, although his ranking is stable.

[christianz]

Drop on April 1st and weakness continues today.

[mosxu]

The Great Neil Patel reveals today the G search volume = 5 trillion…

Don’t think your website is #*$! is just subject to elitism and personalisation still happening under Trump nose!

Hey Elon ? How much of this 5 trillion are zombies?

What the future holds:
42% of users say G is becoming less useful
66% said quality of information is going downhill
61% of Gen Z and 53% of Millennials say they prefer using AI tools over traditional search engines


Game over !

[EditorialGuy]

Still bouncing around here. Gogle traffic is up one day, down the next, up again the day after that.

Also, I got invited to use Google's new AI Mode, and I can't say that I'm impressed. A couple of links to my own site from the AI Mode results didn't work, and some of the other recommendations were bizarre. One of the suggested sources of travel information about [City] talked about trains going to Station X, but Station X is in a different major city that's several hours away. Maybe users should be grateful that the site has very little editorial information to mislead them. (It's an e-commerce site that sells sightseeing tours. In my niche, Google Search is increasingly promoting sites that sell travel products, even for queries that are clearly informational and not commercial.)

[ichthyous]

29% drop in USA traffic today by 1:30...this is becoming drastic. Business is gone...no calls, no inquiries from the website, nothing. Of course, the markets are down hugely today and it looks like the US is declaring a trade war on the rest of the world, so that might have something to do with it. The dollar dropped 2% just today, which is great for me...however everyone is so pissed now that nobody wants to buy from US businesses so it won't matter that my products are cheaper...

[goodoldweb]

And now Google wants their AI to go through our businesses emails (by default) and use the information it finds to display on the search results pages. Needles to mention we're opting out. Insanity.

Anyone else received today the Google merchant center email informing them of the above mentioned?


"Merchant Centre is introducing a new way to showcase your business and products to shoppers across Google by using information from the marketing emails available through your website.

Here's how it works: • You're in control On 3 April 2025, you’ll be automatically opted into Marketing content usage. You can opt out at any time in Merchant Centre settings • Google will collect and display relevant content from your marketing emails on Search, the Shopping tab and more This includes sales and other promotions, social media links, new product announcements and more. We will treat this content as 'Content' subject to the Merchant Center terms – no other Terms and Conditions will apply to the use of the marketing emails within Merchant Center. • Benefits of sharing your marketing email data Save time and effort by letting Google automatically pull in the most relevant information from your marketing emails, ensuring that your brand and products are showcased effectively"

[Micha]

@goodoldweb Yes, I got the email earlier, but that definitely violates the data protection regulation in the EU.

@ ichthyous Well, can you blame people? The way the government is behaving, anger at the US is growing and even here in Germany more and more want to do without US products.

So, the numbers: The news site still gets a lot of views via Discover, but the ranking has dropped significantly.
Store: sales via the traffic Google sends us remain high. I hope it stays that way.

[BigKat]

@goodoldweb

Is Google harvesting data from marketing emails intended for Gmail users? I haven't dug into this yet, but got the email as well. I feel this is a slippery slope where Google will just use everyone's Gmail account (and Google hosted) emails to train their AI including direct personal and business communications. What's to stop them when all they have to do is add a sentence to their terms?