May 2025 Google Search Observations

[goodoldweb]

Google is not a search engine. It's an ad engine.

[edited by: not2easy at 11:28 am (utc) on May 1, 2025]
[edit reason] New month, new thread [/edit]

[mosxu]

It will be down to a judge to decide if AI is responsible or not!

To be honest so much information is wrong AI can easily create accidents!

[RedBar]

The SERPs in my global sector are now so bad that I may as well upload a 25+ year old site if this is what is deemed as quality and unique information.

Fortunately, at the moment, my local UK sites are ok however that is probably because of a low population region plus, I'm guessing, less manipulation than the USA?

[BigKat]

It will be down to a judge to decide if AI is responsible or not!

Using comparative negligence, the judge can assign a percentage of liability. I know nothing about this case, but I wonder if they had some sort of age restriction in place. I wonder if they also had a disclaimer, like Google's experimental disclaimer. Imagine buying a set of tires for your car, labeled experimental, and having a tire blow out on the highway at 70MPH with the manufacturer having no liability. These tech companies have too much implied immunity, to experiment on the lives of citizens, if you ask me. I could see defense bringing up Section 230 in this case as well.

[azlinda]

I will have to say that I am getting as much traffic as I ever did. The problem is that the CPM is super low. I recall Google saying that CPM would give us close to what we were making before the switch. That has not been the case for me.

[goodoldweb]

Site traffic remains anemic — mostly single-page zombies and casual browsers who likely arrived by mistake. Adwords performance hasn't been any better.

In response, we’ve begun shifting a significant portion of our advertising budget toward alternative platforms like Facebook and X. While there’s a learning curve and some time investment required, we believe it’s well worth it. Given Google’s disgusting market dominance and increasingly questionable practices of abuse, we’re more than ready to diversify our spend and explore channels that offer more control, and value.

Good one Google team.

[ichthyous]

Incredibly poor traffic yesterday from everywhere...search traffic was down 23%. It almost seemed as if there was an outage, but i guess just more tinkering and almost daily updates...

[Martin Ice Web]

yes, since yesterday traffic is worse again.
Again we are seeing short to long times where no user comes from google.
It seems like a role back to rubbsih serps.

[nordland]

Traffic is increasing here, record highs almost every day. Search terms in Google Analytics show increases every day, so it looks positive for the future. CPM is down a bit in the last week. Don't panic, it will probably change over time.

[seomotionz]

Incredibly poor traffic yesterday from everywhere...search traffic was down 23%. It almost seemed as if there was an outage, but i guess just more tinkering and almost daily updates...

@ichthyous

yes, since yesterday traffic is worse again.
Again we are seeing short to long times where no user comes from google.
It seems like a role back to rubbsih serps.

@Martin Ice Web

It started since the last 48 hours but got bad in the last 24 hours. Traffic is low I would say very low. Even during the updates and AI roll outs and other what nots couldn't bring the traffic down to this. Either G is again testing something or just a sizeable portion of the internet users has turned off their devices.

[RedBar]

For my global sites this past week has seen a 40% reduction in traffic therefore most likely on Sunday 1st June these sites will solely have a splash contact information page. For my widgets G / search / enquiry generation has altered massively, the first 20 years were very beneficial to us. Since about 2010/12 G 's manipulation began in earnest and by 2015 it was only going one way and that has been downwards.

Meanwhile realworld business and fairs have continued upwards, especially so outside of the "West", therefore more effort will be applied there.

At the moment our local UK sites are doing fine with consistent daily traffic and surprisingly little spam and robot activity!

I doubt I'll be posting much unless something drastic were to happen.

[Micha]

This week has been terrible. The shop is dead again. Since Monday, Google traffic has been practically zero, and sales have plummeted accordingly. Even AdWords is hardly bringing in anything. Overall, it's been a terrible month for the shop. As Martin already said, the times of day when no one comes to the website via Google are increasing.
At least the news page is growing, but that's only thanks to news/discover traffic; there's nothing to be gained organically at the moment.

[BigKat]

Google traffic has been practically zero, and sales have plummeted accordingly. Even AdWords is hardly bringing in anything. Overall, it's been a terrible month for the shop

We're seeing more sales coming from ChatGPT, which is a good sign. But online shopping is dominated by Amazon and Google, which is almost like a reprint of Amazon but in advertisement form, giving ChatGPT a very long way to go before it becomes a top contender. Even our regular customers have greatly reduced their spending, which is a strong sign of worsening economic conditions.

[RedBar]

We're seeing more sales coming from ChatGPT,

Here comes my ignorance ! How / what type of sales do you make through ChatGTP.

Supposedly I have had referrals from ChatGTP but I have no idea how.

[BigKat]

@RedBar

ChatGPT crawls and sends traffic just like search engines do. For products, they have a wait list [openai.com...] but they still reference products we sell that generates traffic. The conversion rate from ChatGPT traffic is astronomically better than Google.

[goodoldweb]

At this point almost anything is better than google search or adwords. They've completely lost it.

Google would be much better off replacing the CEO by a ChatGPT module, they're much smarter.

[Micha]

Google would be much better off replacing the CEO by a ChatGPT module, they're much smarter.

Even a 386 PC would be better suited as CEO of Google than Sundar.
I still don't understand how you can keep someone in such a position who panics and completely revamps the main product to the point that it completely misses the market.

[mosxu]

@BigKat

“The conversion rate from ChatGPT traffic is astronomically better than Google.”

So it seems for selected some in google it is so funny maybe @elonmusk can look into this! It is not necessarily outside DOGE scope and it is also Grok competition and investors instrests …

[BigKat]

@mosxu

I thought Musk stepped down from DOGE because shareholders demanded he work for Tesla at least 40 hours a week? The shareholders sound like Sergey Brin telling Googlers to do the same so they can be the first to achieve AGI.

[mosxu]

@BigKat

Yes Elon stepped down but he can still refer things to DOGE!

As you reported the mind blowing conversion rate of Chat GPT it is something Elon needs to take note of!

As we all know AI Overviews were introduced to compete with Chat GPT and Grok and others! This for us translated to a huge amount of zombie traffic to our ads!

Are we supposed to pay for zombies for a certain company to compete with Chat GPT after it had the biggest research budget in human history?

[mhansen]

What the "New Web" is going to boil down to, is someone creating a tokenized publisher economy, where every Googlebot or AIbot that comes to scrape data from ANY type of website, is going to cost them some gas money to do so, for every single bit (as in bit of data) they ingest. "You want my content, then pay me for it!" Kind of like Google does when people use Maps API excessively, etc. Pay to play!

If a bot (or human trying to get past a checkpoint) skips around paywalls somehow, bury them in a tarpit (ai bot trap) that keeps them there with no way out except to abandon the browser session.

[Biju]

That move alone increased my search traffic by 23%.

[Dooku]

I mentioned 2025 is going to be interesting......this is just the beginning:
[youtube.com...]

[saladtosser]

Is anyone else noticing massive fluctuations in the SERPs starting around the 24th of May? I’ve seen some dramatic shifts in rankings, some of the "big players" in my niche (sites that have dominated the 1st and 2nd positions for over a decade) suddenly dropped to page 2 on the 24th and haven’t budged since.

It’s as if whatever had been working for them all these years has been completely flipped on its head. Ten years at the top is a good run, but something major has clearly changed from what I see.

Anyone else seeing serious movement since the 24th? I've noticed a few small shuffles since, but nothing major. This really feels like a core update to me, just too big not to be but no ones really talking about it other than Barry and he just needs the wind to shift direction (jk love u bazza).

[Conro]

@saladtosser The worse the SERPs, the higher the chances that users will want to use AIO

[saladtosser]

@Conro no joke mate, it’s true. I just searched something I clearly remember. A mate of mine back in the early 2000s (ex-mate now, he got involved with my ex-wife) had over 800 types listed in full detailed profiles. It’s not my niche, just something I was always interested in.

I typed in “Types of WIDGET” and the first five pages were all “Top 10 Widget” junk. Just the same old recycled WordPress spam. Nothing useful.

Page 6, I finally found one that said “190 Types of WIDGET”. Had to go all the way to page 14 to find one that listed “340 Types”. Still nowhere near the 800 I know existed back then. There’s probably more now, but instead we get served “top 10” lists by who exactly? The proper content is buried so deep it may as well not exist. Honestly, not even worth a $2.99 hosting fee to keep going.

Hit the like button. I monetise Webmaster World now. If you don’t, I get buried in the algorithm or whatever it’s doing these days. Like, subscribe, hit the bell, and even if you pay for premium to skip ads, I’ll still hit you with paid promos. Because money, I guess.

[Dooku]

AIO boxes filled with crap from AI created content:
[youtube.com...]

But then again, I wonder if this also may be a hopeless attempt by G to fight the obvious huge amount of AI created spam pages? I mean, it's practically impossible for normal mortals to get listed in the AIO boxes with a legit website....unless you are a well established website/brand.
So G is just pushing all the rest so far down the page or even page 2 or 3 that it makes no more sense for all the auto generated AI page spam websites to try and rank? It's like G is saying: "you are either a confirmed trustworthy website/brand or you can forget about normal rankings"....and at the same time G accepts the collateral damage also?

And on a similar note, if Cloudflare is putting so much effort in AI bot countermeasures, it's probably far worse then we think?:
[winbuzzer.com...]

[RubicCubed]

"you are either a confirmed trustworthy website/brand or you can forget about normal rankings"....and at the same time G accepts the collateral damage also?

We had citations in AIO, and may still have, but I quit checking because they don't send any traffic. Google likely provides these citations as a legal maneuver instead of with an intent to send traffic to our pages. The proliferation of AI content, and the AI scrapers that produce that content, threatens the entire internet. This threat is not only from regurgitated and often inaccurate information being provided to gullible users, but also the entire usability of the internet. See the story [businesstechweekly.com...] where Gary Illyes of Google says an incoming wave of AI bots will create unprecedented internet congestion.

[Samsam1978]

The web is dying, publishers are not producing because its not worth it, not paid, no content, dead internet.

[tangor]

Web is drying up, or more precisely, doing as little as possible to keep a face forward. Nobody is quitting as long as nickles and dimes are coming in, but nobody is pushing NEW content in the chase since empirically there is no evidence that such effort is rewarded.

Currently webmasters/creators are in "wait and see" mode. Waiting for the courts to finish some cases in progress. Waiting to see where the real world economy is going these days of international tariffs, wars, supply chain disruptions... Add in the uncertainty of the copyright/value questions regarding AI and LLM rips...

MEANWHILE, those with value product, brand name, market share, investor backing, will continue to do well since they are NOT solely dependent up g or their ad system(s). Nor is the web going anywhere: it is as essential as print, radio and tv as a communication medium.

For all the rest, whatever CAN be made with the current g platforms will continue to do so---and make observations of how things are going ... minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day ... one dime at a time.

[Whitey]

@tangor That captures the quiet grind many are navigating. It really does feel like a “wait and see” phase.

That said, I think those who use this time to quietly build, owning their audience, exploring AI for scale, strengthening brand identity, may find themselves ahead as the cycle shifts. Even small steps now could be positioning for bigger wins later. I appreciate your grounded take, but I still see a path forward for the adaptable.

[Treud]

Since the last « google heat » I see more traffic, but still no inquiry. More bots coming as well, like, a lot !
Let’s see after a few days if it’s relevant or not. More customer in the US despite’s AI !

[System]

New month, new thread here: [webmasterworld.com...]

[edited by: not2easy at 8:04 pm (utc) on Jun 3, 2025]
[edit reason] New month, new thread [/edit]