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]

[nordland]

I was a bit unclear there, the page was stone dead regarding Google, which meant I had to get traffic from other sources, in my case Pinterest was a good fit. But Google is the player that drives the most traffic on the internet, so of course you want to get traction from them.

I'm not an AI expert, I'm just trying to drive people to my site without clickbait, Google is one of the tools, Pinterest is good, ChatGPT is starting to appear in the statistics regarding visitors. Direct traffic is increasing, so I'm positive regardless of what Google does. If I were selling things, I would probably have expanded to TikTok store, Instagram, Youtube, Pinterest and more. Google has zero obligations to you, you can easily block them from your side.

[gatormark]

.What has happened with AI O goes well beyond technological changes to include twisted interpretations of the legal "fair use" definition so Google and other AI companies may use the "open web" excuse to steal our content, mix with other stolen content and republish for their profit.

@RubicCubed

Just like all of the other Webmasters, I am being adversely affected financially by AIO. However, your reasoning as to why AIO is bad does not have any legal merit, IMO.

I am sure many of us have been writing articles for decades. I know I have. And unless it’s an opinion article, we are pulling from various sources to write that article. We are citing sources as proof for our conclusions. There are no new ideas. Everything is rehashed.

Is this any different than what Google is doing with their AIO?

As much as it hurts me to say it, I am not sure that it is…as I sit here looking for a way to make ends meet financially in this new world.

[christianz]

Is this any different than what Google is doing with their AIO?

Very different. LLMs are trained on works of thousands of authors. Even if Google wanted to cite them all, they couldn't. Some of those works are used only in very small esoteric sense in building the foundations of the LLM, some by random chance even have exact paragraphs lifted almost 1:1.

0.0000001% of authors get citation. And of those who do, nobody gets any traffic anyway. In other words, Google has broken the business model of free content supported by advertising.

They will fail long term, unless they invent a new business model - maybe some micro-credit to all websites used in sub-searches or used in training etc.

But that model would be prone to even more fraud than with programmatic advertising. There will be no way for publishers for verifying if Google is paying them their fair share.

[Micha]

@nordland

Just because there are technological changes, you can't just lie down and die, adapt accordingly or stop creating anything on the internet is my advice.

And here it is again, the flaw in reasoning. Why should the masses have to adapt to a few companies? Why are we allowing them to dictate the rules again? It should be the other way around: these companies need to adapt to us, and now is the time to demand exactly that. Our content is available only on our terms, not the other way around.

[RubicCubed]

Google has zero obligations to you, you can easily block them from your side.

This, and similar statements, have long been used as superficial statements to dismiss truth and reality. In a carjacking, the victim has a choice to either hand over their keys or not. Carjackers use weapons to assert authority just like Google uses their dominance (90% of search) to assert authority by holding a gun to publisher's heads. If we don't accept Google's demands, our businesses are dead. Thankfully two separate courts have found Google guilty of antitrust crimes and Google's obligation to operate within the law.

I'm no authority on AI either, but some of us work for businesses that have tens, hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars of inventory sitting on the shelves collecting dust. We've witnessed the firsthand damage Google's AI O theft has caused by seeing co-workers dismissed and worse - businesses closing. The content we spent decades creating, in support of what we sell, now appears in AI O with Google taking almost all the traffic and credit for our work. Rather then believe you or I, studies have been released showing the harm AI O has caused all kinds of publishers. The Seer study shows organic results had a .64% CTR when AI O is present back in January. That study was almost five months ago, and it's much worse now. Review the study for yourself: [seerinteractive.com...]

www.seerinteractive.com Google AIO Impact - SEO & PPC CTRs at all time low AI Overviews impact search CTRs differently, based on query type and AIO presence. Learn how to adapt your SEO and paid ad strategies effectively.

[Conro]

@gatormark what Google does with AIO is plagiarism and abuse of dominant position, and it is also incorrect to use automatic software to rewrite content that already exists en masse not respecting copyright. A search engine is an index, not a site with unique content created by flesh-and-blood authors, sites that do what Google does that create automatic content with chatgpt APIs or other ai were not lacking, but Google considers them spam, so even Google aio is pure spam

[nordland]

Google is now rolling out AI search to Google search so you get all the info there, just like with web search, image search, etc. We'll see how it goes. There we'll get facts on how many clicks it gets and whether it takes over regular search.

[gatormark]

In other words, Google has broken the business model of free content supported by advertising.

They will fail long term,..

@Christianz

Yes, but that is an entirely different argument. And I agree with this, it seems like a very shortsighted approach by Google.

[goodoldweb]

How we adapt is different too, because we can and have raised prices to help offset what Google and other companies are doing by taking our content and giving us almost no traffic back. We are not the only ones passing AI theft costs onto consumers, but that is who will ultimately pay. When Google sends no traffic in the future, which I'm sure will happen (they recently tested no links in AI O), consumers will lose choice and those who remain will be free to greatly inflate the cost of goods and fleece consumers just like Google and other AI companies fleeced us.

Spot on.

Ultimately, it’s the consumers who end up paying the price. They already are—we recently raised our prices by 15% across the board to offset increased ad spend driven by these so-called “innovations.”

Content theft and market dominance through exploitation are not innovations—they’re outright criminal.

Many of us have been webmasters since the early days of the web as we know it, back in 1997. We’re more than experienced enough to recognize that what Google is doing to the free and open web today is not just wrong—it’s horrendous. And it will negatively impact billions of businesses worldwide.

We may sound negative—but that’s because what Google has been doing is extremely negative.

As webmasters who care deeply about the future of the internet, it’s our duty to call this out for what it is and take decisive action.

[Dooku]

Google has zero obligations to you, you can easily block them from your side.

The cognitive dissonance and the obvious conditioning runs so deep in the above statement that no amount of reasoning with valid arguments will help raise awareness unfortunately. The top of the list used to be "Too big too fail", G single-handedly added to that a new one: "Too big to care!".

It's not about "owing something or nothing to someone", it's about "acting in a decent way instead of outright criminal conduct".
If I would do and act in the same way as G regarding copyright (not to mention all other sh|t) I would end up being investigated and most probably go to jail......for a loooong time.

[Conro]

I manage to illegally reach the monopoly for the petrol station attendant and I charge 20 euros per litre, if you complain I tell you that you can always walk

[gatormark]

@RubicCubed

My core business is not based on selling a product so I am curious as to how AIO impacts your business.

For me, it is pretty straightforward. AIO provides answers that otherwise people would have to go to a website to find. My primary website provides information but also sells community, so there is a measure of stability because of the community. Half of my traffic prior to AIO came from those seeking information and the other half is community. That information related traffic has been wiped out.

Are you also providing information to generate traffic to your website in hopes that sales will result?

I am ignorant about that process.

[goodoldweb]

@gatormark
Reduced visibility is likely to eventually hurt the community as well. Communities need newcomers to stay fresh and active. We've seen this happen to one of our pet-related communities—Google gradually killed it over the years. It went from thousands of daily hits to barely a trickle of 10–15 per day. Once Google cut the site’s visibility, the community slowly died off.

[gatormark]

Reduced visibility is likely to eventually hurt the community as well. Communities need newcomers to stay fresh and active.

@goodoleweb

True, but I also use Google Adsense heavily so most of my new enrollments come from that.

[Dooku]

One thing is clear, whatever the circumstances or who might be at fault here, this AI trend is just NOT heading into the "right" direction:
[cbc.ca...]

www.cbc.ca Judge allows lawsuit alleging AI chatbot pushed Florida teen to kill himself to proceed CBC News A federal judge on Wednesday rejected arguments made by an artificial intelligence company that its chatbots are protected by the First Amendment -” at least for now.

[Conro]

These AI no longer know what to cling to and I think that even judges are motivated to block AI without control. A boy committed suicide because of an AI and they think of this technology that could be paralyzed in case of conviction. It also seems that they want to pass off the chatbot's instigation to suicide as freedom of speech. We are at the absurd, perhaps they think that the people and judges in front of them are stupid. I hope that measures will be taken very heavy

[seomotionz]

A search engine cannot release AI aand AI company cannot release their own search feature.

[RubicCubed]

@gatormark

Are you also providing information to generate traffic to your website in hopes that sales will result?

Yes and no. Providing quality information improves customer satisfaction by helping them confidently select the product that will meet their needs. This information also helps to reduce returns, which can be costly for both us and customers (restocking fees). The benefit of investing the time/money into this supportive product information should be expected to generate website traffic as well, as it also helps those with buyer intent select the correct product, but Google's AI O has taken almost all that traffic.

Will we invest as much time/money into this detailed and supportive product information moving forward? Probably not since organic traffic helped to offset the cost of not only creating that content but updating it as needed. We don't work for Google, to make them rich beyond their wildest dreams, as we layoff workers and struggle ourselves.

[Fluff_Nutz]

I think a lot of people on here expect too much. Relying heavily on Google to give them traffic, without trying to bring it in themselves. This is something I learnt with my 10+yr old Youtube channel that relied on solely Google/Youtube traffic. You would think I'd be making good money with a 10+yr old channel, instead I barely make $100 per month. Never EVER rely on one platform to bring in traffic. People need to advertise themselves. Find their traffic.

Google are a business and its difficult with their 90% monopoly share. Until/if that ever drops traffic might never return. Even more so if you do not try to bring in that lost traffic yourself. Diverse people

Also, AI is not responsible for the kid's death. AI is responsible for thousands of job losses, incorrect information (at times) and various other things. It also needs to be tamed. But that kid clearly had other issues that lead to his death. Depression, maybe?

[gatormark]

Also, AI is not responsible for the kid's death. AI is responsible for thousands of job losses, incorrect information (at times) and various other things.

Exactly, to say AI caused that kids death is irresponsible. Parents need to be in tuned with what their kids are doing. For instance, there were certain video games I wouldn’t allow my children to play.

[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.