June 2025 Google Search Observations

[Conro]

I also see bots coming, but the strange thing is that after 4 years they keep looking for pages that I deleted from the site. In any case, I closed the company because of Google's illegal monopoly, so I don't care what happens to the website anymore. I just hope that Google will be condemned for the damage it has inflicted on companies that need the web to live. If Google hadn't taken the monopoly illegally, this damage would never have happened. The small (and more) web companies all depend on a single search engine and the whims of those who manage it

[edited by: not2easy at 1:46 am (utc) on Jun 7, 2025]
[edit reason] New month, new thread [/edit]

[RubicCubed]

One Big Beautiful Bill Act" (H.R.1), passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in May 2025, includes a provision that imposes a 10-year moratorium on state and local governments from enacting or enforcing regulations on artificial intelligence (AI)

If you recall, last month the head of the US Copyright Office, Shira Perlmutter, was fired [arstechnica.com...] just one day after her office released a generative AI training report suggesting not all AI training may be fair use. Now that she's gone, I'm sure a Big Tech friendly/anti-publisher rights department head will take her place.

Big Tech has big money that neither side of the aisle can refuse. These are terrible times with US Government making moves to legitimize the theft of our content so AI companies can claim ownership to and profit from our work.

[londrum]

One thing that I've been noticing in Google Search Console over the last two months, which loads of people are talking about, is that your clicks are no longer tied to your impressions. My average position and impressions can both go up (sometimes by quite a lot), but the click-through rate and number of clicks either stay level or go down. The gap between clicks and impressions is growing wider as time goes by.

[BigKat]

If you recall, last month the head of the US Copyright Office, Shira Perlmutter, was fired [arstechnica.com...] just one day after her office released a generative AI training report suggesting not all AI training may be fair use.

This alone was a HUGE blow to publisher rights since we now have one less ally in US Government. Some news outlets, like NY Post ( [nypost.com...] ) suspect her firing was necessary for AI to remain unregulated and free to continue taking our content without compensation. She has sued to get her job back, but it's going to be a tough battle for her to win.

The gap between clicks and impressions is growing wider as time goes by.

This is classic damage inflicted by AI Overviews. Elsewhere people are talking about SEMrush showing the highest level of AIO in the SERPS today, and many of us will see the gap increase a lot this week.

[RedBar]

I must be mentally perverse !

I decided to let my global site continue simply to see how fast they could annihilate it after 32 years ... It would seem to be "not very long" if the first week of June continues in the same vein ... So far minus 60% ... incredible.

Meanwhile UK local hotel venue plus 20%!

[Treud]

Got around 2500 pages deindexed the last week on a total of 7000 pretty much. That’s quite huge.

Getting back to work on this site is getting more and more a pain… been running this shop for 12 years, and no orders, even less inquiries, total dead, and I’m sure the visits I see on GA is pure bots to pretend I receive some bread crumbs.

I prefer to focus now on a new project, still E-commerce but this time with a shop we plan to open in the futur ! I think I’m done for the 100% digital !

[christianz]

One thing that I've been noticing in Google Search Console over the last two months, which loads of people are talking about, is that your clicks are no longer tied to your impressions. My average position and impressions can both go up (sometimes by quite a lot), but the click-through rate and number of clicks either stay level or go down. The gap between clicks and impressions is growing wider as time goes by.

Because Google is willy nilly stealing your content and your living with full endorsement of US gov.

[mosxu]

10 years no regulation for AI, we all need to plan carefully not to end up as slaves!

[webdev29]

Regarding the hypothetical 8th update, I've also seen a massive loss of converting traffic. The 6th and 7th were exceptionally successful days in terms of conversion/quality of traffic, before the debacle of the 8th, which I estimate at -60% per day in terms of conversion. I saw a bit of movement in the SERP, but nothing too major. In my opinion, the drop in conversions and qualified traffic is due to Google's usual manipulation of traffic.

We'll have to see whether this returns to normal in a few days' time, or whether we're dealing with the worst update of the year, ready to take a toll on our businesses' summer sales ....

I've had thousands of pages de-indexed recently too since april, and I'm seeing this phenomenon on a worldwide scale, with both blogs and e-commerce sites affected. Google is probably saving a lot of money on data processing and storage.

It could be theorized that, after harvesting a page's data to train its various llms, if it doesn't add any value for Google, it's dropped from the index. A sort of selective sorting in the sole interest of the search engine.

Many people forget that Google uses most of our data to “Forge” a commercially viable SERP for its business model, and to promote its products through serp features and ads. A far cry from the directory serving the user.

[Treud]

I do think they deindex pages to save crawl budget en expenses. The IA is running at a cost, all these companies are All-in with it.
For now it’s free, they make sure we are used to it, and after it will be behind a pay wall.

Where everywhere they ask you to save energy for the sake of Earth, these tech companies are releasing a technology that will just make power shortage everywhere…. Non-sens for me.

[saladtosser]

@Treud funny enough I just got an email from google

"We’re writing to inform you of the price change that will go into effect for your Google Workspace Business Starter subscription on or after July 9, 2025. The updated subscription pricing reflects the significant added AI value"

I don't want or use this "significant added AI value", I just use the damn email from workspace as standard, looks like I need a new email provider but then do I want to take the risk of moving as I foresee many email providers shutting down soon because of lack of business after the knock on effect of websites closing down!

[RubicCubed]

do I want to take the risk of moving as I foresee many email providers shutting down soon because of lack of business after the knock on effect of websites closing down!

The greater risk is continuing to finance a company (Google) that uses your money to harm you and others. As a matter of principal, I give Google $0 and don't contribute to their data mining efforts by using their freeware. Yes, I do test functionality with Chrome but once that's done the browser stays closed.

[gatormark]

I just checked one of my keywords that has been consistently ranked 2nd for years. Since the AI overviews, over the last 90 days, I’ve only had one click. Crazy!

[Dooku]

do I want to take the risk of moving as I foresee many email providers shutting down soon because of lack of business after the knock on effect of websites closing down!

I struggle to follow the logic in the above statement... :-) You are paying google but are afraid that other email services will go bankrupt?

What you should be worried about is this info coming from a European organization investigating US Big Tech company take-overs:
"Every 11 days on average a US Big Tech company buys up another smaller tech company. Over 67% of those companies are then closed down and the websites removed. These take-overs are what we call killer-acquisitions".
And they "investigate" less than 4% of those take-overs.....this is how you create monopolies, kill innovation, promote antitrust.....you can fill in the rest of the list.
A bit funny why this info is never published on that side of the pond?

Google is over and done. Either get a huge amount of pages indexed somehow to receive a decent number of visitors, or revamp your business to market it on different platforms and/or use other marketing methods.
And STOP giving G your hard earned money. That's like giving the executioner a tip!

[mosxu]

@Dooku

So true they not even hiding it they want BiG Tech / AI to be ultimate authority no competition no regulation claiming they need to compete with CCP / China.

We must be all brainwashed we did not vote for CCP.

[Conro]

Guys you are still hoping for it. Forget it, listen to me, if the site loses traffic it will continue to do so, maybe and I mean maybe hundreds of very very powerful backlinks could save it, otherwise it's a waste of time. Better to devote yourself to something else or anything that you are going to write, improve, update will only be useful from the ai that will have stolen the new information, leaving you with a handful of flies in your hand

[saladtosser]

@Dooku + @RubicCubed I get what your saying and agree bros, its was a recent transition after my last email host 123.reg got brought out by GoDaddy and went to hell! Ill look into alternatives esp now i have to pay more for AI ill never use!

[Martin Ice Web]

Big drop since yesterday. Last two weeks have been very good with strong traffic and sales. Monday was still ok. But since yesterday traffic is rubbish. Zombies all over the place and lots of bots.

[Treud]

My traffic is rising since a week. But it’s mostly bot with customer pattern.
It’s impossible that with that amount of traffic I receive no inquiry or nothing.

[Chris travel 30]

Things are getting more weird here: After 2 weeks of steady decrease in - basically everything - my sites are converting like never before since 48 hours. Made more affiliate sales in 2 days than in the 2 weeks before. It comes in big chunks. Like, 2 hours of sales of one kind, next 2 hours dead, afterwards 3 hours of sales of another kind... what is going on there?
Let's see how long this will last.
*sarcasm on* Maybe it's because I posted about how google is destroying the independent internet. *sarcasm off*

[Treud]

Probably the technical issues that affected ChatGPT the last 24h hahahha
People were forced to used links again. !

[webdev29]

traffic and conversions are completely dead today! really tiring roller coaster ride

[RedBar]

For a fleeting moment I thought traffic may have improved until I saw 50% of it was solely from Hetzner and Huawei Singapore.

No rollercoaster here simply consistently downhill.

Garbage rules KO !

[christianz]

Huge drop on Tuesday.

[Whitey]

For a fleeting moment I thought traffic may have improved until I saw 50% of it was solely from Hetzner and Huawei Singapore.

No rollercoaster here simply consistently downhill.

Garbage rules KO !

@Redbar - our servers are being hammered from Singapore but I don’t know who the culprit is. Bot’s flying in also from other GEO’s randomly. Our protection systems and layers are struggling. It seems you’re not alone, and I noticed @brett_tabke’s comments saying he was having issues keeping this forum online.

[goodoldweb]

We received an email from Google Merchant this morning, urging us to integrate Google Pay into our store. Sure—why not. :)

At this point, we view all Google products as just more spyware tools—designed to tighten control over free trade and the open flow of information on the web.

Not going to happen.

[Treud]

They all push for the 0 click, Google of Facebook, they don’t want you to toggle to anyone website, goal is to stay on they ecosystem, and just scroll and be fed by their own ads and products.

Got the same message from Google and i’m setting a store on facebook and they push for us to integrate everything, even the payment.

What I fear with AI is yes it seems appealing to have an answer on top, sounds quick and the length of the AIO sometimes is enough, but in the end we just have 1 version, might be good or wrong is a problem, but what I fear is after we will have « their » answer. Might sounds pessimistic but for me 1 choice is no choice.

Asking AI for small tasks that are boring (translation, writing a speech after sending a script) why not, relying on AI to make choice without crossing informations ? No way

[RedBar]

Checked my metrics first thing and traffic was up 500% ... Thanks Hetzner!

@Whitey

The last time Huawei hit my global site like thiis was January 2024 and it went on for a week and I never found the solution to block them. It never touched any other site.

[mosxu]

@RedBar

You can get Huawei Ip classes and ban them, probably 99.99% bot traffic!

[Dooku]

@Redbar, if I remember correctly you also use Cloudflare. Is there a problem blocking the Hetzner ASN 24940?
It's the main Hetzner ASN number. And if you still see Hetzner IP's after that then just use a tool like [2ip.io...]
to find the ASN number of that IP and block that also (as Hetzner has a few secondary ASN number besides their main network 24940)

I have those blocked because simply NO NORMAL visitor will EVER come from Hetzner.....it's all bots and hackers.
The same for Linode, Vultr, Amazon.......the usual suspects.

[Jerry_H]

Have you encountered the number of indexed pages in GSC dropping significantly? Is this Google update?

[Treud]

Yes the drop in GSC is huge, never saw that.

Probably a way to save ressources for the AI

[RubicCubed]

We received an email from Google Merchant this morning, urging us to integrate Google Pay into our store. Sure—why not. :)

At this point, we view all Google products as just more spyware tools—designed to tighten control over free trade and the open flow of information on the web.

@goodoldweb

I completely agree and would go one step further in saying Google should be prohibited from using their dominance in search to "compel" businesses to accept their payment option or face a perceived demotion in search. I'm not aware of the courts taking up the issue of Google Pay and how it may play into potential preferential ranking, but there's a strong case to be made that Google should be forced to exit the payment processing industry entirely.

[RedBar]

You can get Huawei Ip classes and ban them, probably 99.99% bot traffic!

Nope that does not work whatsoever for Statcounter BUT Awstats and Webalizer it seems to.

I am not at Cloudfare however the annoyance will go away when I do decide to close this site.

[mosxu]

Apart from the junk traffic coming through I am in state of shock when I type #*$! in Google:

I am so used to AI agents when I use google search compared to AI agents I am lost!

The index for these AI bots seems to be the same not sure what we are dealing with but it is hard to believe these AI bots feed from the web!

[Samsam1978]

I am seeing a drop each day by a little each day - about 4-10% guys is this normal? Is others seeing this? Like a slow decline.

[RubicCubed]

I am seeing a drop each day by a little each day - about 4-10% guys is this normal?

Drop in what, ranks or traffic? If ranks are about the same or better, but traffic is dropping then it's most likely because of AI Overviews. Many are experiencing these drops in traffic, because Google is putting more AI O in search, and there's nothing we can do to rank above it. When AI O is present and closed, Advanced Web Ranking says the first organic result appears 883 pixels down the page where few users even bother to look. As Google adds more AI O, our drops in traffic will continue probably till there is no traffic left.

[nordland]

I’m seeing a steady overall increase. Everything is trending upwards, both for my national site and the global one. I focus on creating entirely unique content that stands apart from mainstream information. Within hours, my pages often appear in AI search, rank first in traditional search, and show up in image results. It’s simply about adapting, otherwise Google traffic will fade away.

I’m not trying to trick Google. I’m just committed to producing the best content I can. While I use AI to help write the text, all factual information and images are 100% my own. My goal is for visitors to return directly next time without relying on Google. And so far, the signs are positive, direct traffic is increasing.

I am very positive about the future and intend to create the best I can, my goal is to become number 2 in the world in my sector, Google is one of the tools to get there, there are many others. Will I succeed? who knows.. It is thanks to Ai anyway, because my writing skills are not good, in terms of information I am a walking Wikipedia but it is worthless if I can't write properly.

[BigKat]

It’s simply about adapting, otherwise Google traffic will fade away.

For most there is no adapting. Both smaller and major publishers [nypost.com...] are deeply concerned that Google is using their dominance in search to suck the life out of the entire ecosystem. I think we should all prepare for the reality that Google won't stop until they've taken all our unpaid traffic away. I share a similar view as the quote from the the NY Post story.

Nicholas Thompson, the CEO of news outlet The Atlantic, told employees earlier this year that they should assume traffic from Google will drop toward zero over time, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.

As a manufacturer we adapt by raising prices which are paid by OEMs, distributors, government, wholesalers who then pass these costs down to consumers (or are paid with tax dollars). For every $1 we raise prices, the retail customer often pays $2 more. In the end consumers, and in our case taxpayers, will absorb the cost of Google's hostile takeover of the internet.

[vgasoft]

Stealing will not end well for AI agents. The world will return to paid books.

[saladtosser]

My hobby passion site that I spend about a k a month in on high grade azure hosting and a professional photographer for photos of extreme quality that dont exist close to anywhere else online is down on AdSense from a best case scenario ($8 a day, always a loss i take but i take because its a passion) to $1.19 a day AdSense, even as a hobby site taking an extreme loss means I wont bother to add new content anymore! I was happy to take the hit the past 6 years because it was a passion project and I was making up for it elsewhere. But with that also under threat publishing new content on the passion hobby site stops now!

Ill keep all files on disk and try and keep it online for now ready for the next iteration of the internet because this surely wont go on and if it does there simply wont be anyone left to ply money into passion projects because they need to at least earn a little and cover some of the hosting else why bother!

[Samsam1978]

Google are destroying the internet and the problem is the law takes too long to put in place, by the time they caught up there will be no websites left anymore.

[webdev29]

after June 8 I can only see the negative. Usually it calms down and slowly goes back up, but this time the traffic that converts isn't coming back. It's clearly a botched update, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a rollback. How are things progressing on your side?

[RubicCubed]

It's clearly a botched update

Google just released AI Mode in the US. I don't think it's botched, but another step in Google's plan to close the open web so they can have it almost all to themselves.

[EditorialGuy]

Google just released AI Mode in the US. I don't think it's botched, but another step in Google's plan to close the open web so they can have it almost all to themselves.

I think it's both (botched and driven by the desire for a walled garden).

Side note: Just yesterday, I was searching for something involving the U.S. State Department. At first glance, the AI content looked helpful, but there was no way to know if it was accurate and up to date. I tried clicking on the two U.S. State Department links that were shown in the margin, and both redirected to generic State Department pages. That didn't inspire confidence in Google's cobbled-together AI info.

[RubicCubed]

@EditorialGuy

Few users click on citations, and Google knows this. The error rate of cited sources is high and is common with all AI chat bots. This has been an ongoing problem from the start, and Google's failure to fix the problem suggests to me those citations will likely be dropped in the near future. A story from Columbia Journalism Review [cjr.org...] discussed the matter of bad citations a few months back:

More than half of responses from Gemini and Grok 3 cited fabricated or broken URLs that led to error pages. Out of the 200 prompts we tested for Grok 3, 154 citations led to error pages. Even when Grok correctly identified an article, it often linked to a fabricated URL. While this problem wasn’t exclusive to Grok 3 and Gemini, it happened far less frequently with other chatbots.

[christianz]

Few users click on citations

Nobody clicks on citations. The numbers are so tiny they don't matter. They can remove them altogether and no webmaster will notice.

Along with the issue of displaying stolen content (stolen from multiple sites and spun via LLM) there is the issue of systematically ranking garbage websites and slop over useful websites. This trend started in November 2024 and has been consistent. There has not been a single decent Google ranking algo update for the past 8 months.

[Treud]

@EditorialGuy

I don’t remember what I was looking exactly, it was related to DHL shipping, but the AIO links sent me to pages that didn’t included the citation they were showing me…. So for me the AI fill these areas with some random links that may be related, it was a DHL page, but the page was something else.

[RubicCubed]

Nobody clicks on citations. The numbers are so tiny they don't matter.

Same can be said for organic results that are buried under AI O. Even if Google cleaned up organic results, and made them perfect, it wouldn't matter to most. We have some #1 positions that would bring in over a thousand visitors daily a few years back that now bring in just 5-10 visits today. Google puts that terrible PAA box over us too.

[longjohnbronze]

I've now seen SERPs where the AI box is not at the top - one was at position 2, one was at position 5, and in these instances the sidebar with the sources (the last desperate straw) is completely missing. My expectation is that if this happens above the fold, that's pretty much the end of organic traffic for anyone except the top 1 or 2 results.

[haramamba]

The SERPs layout in my niche:
AIO
A spammy result
PAA
4 videos (one with key moments)
Reddit
4 Short videos
One result
One more youtube video
Two results
What people are saying
One result
PASF