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]

[Micha]

It's fun again. Google downgraded my news page on Friday. Suddenly, there's no news traffic anymore. The ranking is rising, but normal searches bring just as many clicks as Bing, which is to say virtually none. But at least AI spam and articles that are actually advertisements are displayed as prominently as possible.

And as if that weren't enough, the shop was also downgraded. The result: despite AdWords and high spending, there have been no sales via Google traffic since Friday.

[Fluff_Nutz]

Funnily enough, after several weeks of downhill traffic. Seems we are now increasing again. But are still -15% over last month. Granted this fall might not be 100% Google this time. I was meddling with the UI. So won't play the blame game this time around.

However, according to someone on Reddit, Google are also looking to implement AI Audio into the SERP too. So likely another ''update'' on the horizon? Thankfully I don't put all my eggs into one basket anymore. That is essentially writing your own death certificate at this point.

Google are also still meddling with Youtube too. According to other posts I have read. Implementing more ads. Increasing both the ads and costs in Premium. Many people have also lost traffic. Even someone in my niche, who I quietly kept my eyes on, has lost traffic and is now homeless. According to their words.

Google are certainly desperate right now. Which makes me think is it out of desperation for continuing to own their monopoly or the court case in August? Perhaps both?

[puckparches]

Google has boosted Reddit so much while ignoring other sites that, eventually, people will just go directly to Reddit and bypass Google. Every search I do, Google either lists mostly Reddit links or suggests more results from Reddit. At this rate, Reddit will survive, and Google Search may become irrelevant. Just look at Reddit's stock performance compared to Google's lately.

[EditorialGuy]

Google has boosted Reddit so much while ignoring other sites that, eventually, people will just go directly to Reddit and bypass Google. Every search I do, Google either lists mostly Reddit links or suggests more results from Reddit.

Well, Google does have a $60 million deal with Reddit that provides Google with access to Reddit's content for AI training purposes. (I don't know if or when the deal will expire, or what period of time the $60 million covers.)

[Whitey]

It's a valid observation. Reddit results are saturating the SERPs across an increasingly wide range of queries, especially opinion-based or community-driven searches.

But it’s not just about user preference; there's a deeper strategic play here. Google’s $60M licensing deal with Reddit isn’t just for training AI. It also conveniently positions Reddit content as a low-cost, high-engagement answer source in an age where Google is shifting from linking out to summarizing in.

That said, if Google over-weights Reddit, it risks creating a recursive loop: training its AI on its own output, degrading result diversity, and making the SERPs feel increasingly homogenous. Reddit has useful content, but it’s not always authoritative or representative.

If users start bypassing Google for Reddit directly (or TikTok or vertical search), then Google's gamble could backfire. The open web ecosystem, like forums, niche publishers, independent voices matters more than ever.

Personally, I think this is an opportunity for indie sites and forums to rethink their role: less SEO-chasing, more community and brand-building, and maybe even their own AI/data plays. Otherwise, we're all just feeding the same beast.

[Conro]

A website affected by hcu that I observe, for 6 months has started publishing 50 news stories a day, previously it only dealt with guides on technology. The news appeared on Google news but nothing, the traffic remained low and now the site is stopped abandoned. He wanted to give it a try but he just wasted time and money. Better to cut with the past and devote yourself to social networks in my opinion, much less restrictive, a video is published on multiple platforms without problems, you can ask for money for sponsorships that no one says anything, AI content is not a problem for anyone. The social network could be the new opportunity, while continuing on websites only increases the frustration because the traffic of the past will no longer be there because of AIO and all the mess it has combined Google. Better to devote yourself to something else, even if it means starting over. At the moment my goal is 10000 followers

[Micha]

@whitey

That said, if Google over-weights Reddit, it risks creating a recursive loop: training its AI on its own output, degrading result diversity, and making the SERPs feel increasingly homogenous. Reddit has useful content, but it’s not always authoritative or representative.

But Google doesn't care. The way Sundar is behaving, he just wants to squeeze money out of the company and doesn't care about anything else. AI is all the rage, but no one really knows what to do with it. The best examples are Saleforce and Klarna. First they said, “We're using AI, so we're laying off employees,” and now they're saying, “We prefer people to AI.”
I stand by my opinion: the bubble will burst, and we have to hold out until then, but we can no longer rely on Google because the company has gone blind.

[mosxu]

@micha

You are correct they actually sacrificing their business model to compete with other AI agents where there is no monopoly, they are not are not trained to swim among other sharks!

Last 7 days zombies increased 70% AI overviews also raise no click expectations to shoppers! It is very confusing for searchers they will naturally stop clicking on ads as well!

[samwest]

@mosxu - long time no see. I stopped coming here a year or two ago, but I'm happy to see you're still carrying the "zombie traffic" torch. It hasn't let up at all and has become the "new normal". Google has to churn and burn its bots for ad revenue profits, so sending fake traffic is a great way to keep milking those poor AdSense accounts. Just a question for anyone gullible enough to still be using AdSense...how is your ROI?

My traffic is flat and in the seasonal dip, but sales are virtually gone. Used to get 20 sales a day, now it's 20 sales a month, if I'm lucky, although I'm still #1 in the search results. IMHO, search is dead. Anytime I need a specific answer, I go to Grok. So are many others, and more every day. Have fun out there!

[Samsam1978]

Is it really over guys?

[nordland]

Of course it's not over, things just change. In a few months everything could look different, you just have to adapt.

[Samsam1978]

Honestly I have been doing this for 20 years and my traffic is 80% gone. Never seen it like that before. Am I alone here? I am too old to get a job now, plus I don't think anyone would employ me anyway.

[mosxu]

@samwest

Nice to have you back! It is a race against the moving cheese game as you described it but it looks will be the end of it with AI competition!

[mosxu]

@Samsam1978

The states were initiating regulations against AI using your content, Big Tech lobbied to eliminate any regulation for 10 years but in less than 10 years AI will not even visit your website, it will generate it’s own content!

[Samsam1978]

@mosxu

But I am in the UK not USA. So that does not count. In 10 years people will have lost their income from the website due to the theft. It is theft because they created something that takes away the websites income by using their words. Crazy.

[Conro]

@Samsam1978 How can you compete with AIO? As soon as the AI answer appears, the traffic for your article in the first position drops a lot, even to zero. Let's not forget that there was previously a huge drop in traffic also due to people also ask, related searches, YouTube, Google community, reddit, forums. For me there is no longer any sense if you are not among the lucky ones where Google has not yet destroyed the serp in that category of subject matter, But it's only a matter of time. Unfortunately Google has made a mess that could have been avoided, it has purposely worsened the serp so that users find the answers given by AIO more effective. When Google puts the prompt under AIO it will be over for everyone.

[frostitomik]

Focus on other search engines maybe?

These are the monthly traffic sources of my new website (75% US/UK):

1) bing - 3,700
2) duckduckgo - 2,100
3) direct - 1,000
4) yahoo - 900
5) google - 700

My other new website, different niche (90% US/UK):

1) bing - 1,200
2) direct - 1,100
3) google - 400
4) duckduckgo - 200
5) yahoo - 100

It's doable, just forget about Google.

[Fluff_Nutz]

For me, no traffic source seems stable. Too busy complaining about big G and, actually, my biggest drops this month comes from a combination of both Bing and Yandex. Whilst my only bit of growth came from Google Organic. What a strange state to be in.

[christianz]

Google traffic at new lows.

I also experienced my first ever "Reddit only SERP". The whole SERP was only reddit from top to bottom. 9 "organic" Reddit results (different threads) and even image section was only Reddit images. After the image section I had no option to get more results. There were the typical spam boxes PAA etc also. And the AI content theft box too.

By the way, this is NOT the kind of Reddit boosting we saw with HCU. In this particular vertical Reddit is far from being the best "human conversations" source. None of the specialized forums that have 100x more of the appropriate content were included.

I am also often seeing results with no more than 2 pages after which it says the "we excluded results that blah blah blah". Even sometimes I see 6 pages in the pagination section but when I click on page 2 the links to pages 3, 4, 5 and 6 are gone. If I skip to page 3 or 6 from page 1 it instantly craps out with "Your search XYZ did not match any documents".

Its impossible to do any kind of deep research with Google.

Hardly surprising that Google's search market share has reached all time low and continues to constantly decline. These last ~9 months of nonstop updates that promote bad sites over good sites and the annoying content theft boxes will accelerate this trend nicely.

[Martin Ice Web]

i guess facebook will start in the next few month with an AI powerd search. They are crawling like crazy since 3 days.
I think googles big river of ads income will soon have less water. With all the new competiton ...

[mosxu]

@martin

Which tells you to keep ads campaigns closed!

[BigKat]

i guess facebook will start in the next few month with an AI powerd search. They are crawling like crazy since 3 days.
I think googles big river of ads income will soon have less water. With all the new competiton ...

So long as this new competition actually helps shoppers find products, I'd welcome it. Google just isn't cutting it and is largely Amazon ads. Should FB actually provide shoppers with options instead of ads like Google, and connect consumers to well-established/trusted independent stores, they could capture a lot of market share.

[shadowlight]

They are just lately & more frequently slipping additional ads in near the top of the SERPs.

Seen multiple SERPS lately with 4 ads, then AIO followed by 1 - 3 organic results then PAA or PASF followed by another 2-3 ads.

This was the layout I seen on one SERP.

Ad
Ad
Ad
Ad
AIO
1 Organic
PAA
Ad
Ad
Ad

Looks to me like they are desperately trying to hit revenue targets. Nothing but Ad spam.

Youtube = open vid, watch 60 seconds of ads, realise you need to skip forward straight away to get to the actually content you want to watch, skip forward only to be presented with another 60 secs of the exact same ads you watched two seconds ago. Also if you have adsense on your site and enable settings so that G can place them (dont know the exact terms they call this), then be prepared for you site to turn into Ad spam central.

[samwest]

Nothing but Ad spam.

Remember Matt Cutts "webspam team"?
That became the epitome of "do as I say, not as I do".

Nowadays, when I search, I exclusively use Grok and make every effort to avoid Gorg.

Grok is infinitely more useful than Google...in fact, Grok helped me refactor a ton of old PHP code from 2007, and it is now PHP 8+ compatible and more secure.

[MayankParmar]

Traffic disappeared starting June 18. It came back after almost a year in June, but now it's gone again. I hope it's temporary.

[MayankParmar]

Discover traffic*

[Micha]

Traffic disappeared starting June 18. It came back after almost a year in June, but now it's gone again. I hope it's temporary.

It's not exactly reassuring, but many publishers have noticed that traffic via Discover declined on the 18th (I'm one of them). On top of that, the feed has become even more useless.

[goodoldweb]

Meanwhile in Australia, Slater and Gordon have started a class action against Google adwords. We've registerd and advised all our adwords clients to do the same.

[mosxu]

@goodoldweb

Slater and Gordon: Known for aggressive advocacy against insurers, corporations, and government bodies.

Let’s see how that gets on but the biggest losers are EU , AU and UK government not protecting their businesses knowingly…

US Congress must do the right thing first!

[Micha]

@mosxus Why is the EU one of the biggest losers? We have good protection, copyright is held in extremely high regard here, Google has real problems here (there is currently discussion about a billion-dollar fine for Google). So I think the situation is much better than in the US.

[Conro]

Pichai is the worst CEO Google has ever had, between fines and compensation for unfair practices he has destroyed an empire, I don't understand how it's still there despite all the disaster it's doing, it's like entrusting Google to a Black hat world seo spammer. [ilsole24ore.com...]

[mosxu]

Translation from Italian:

Also - and this is always useful to remember, when there are Big Tech companies involved - even if European companies were to win in court, getting judgements could be anything but easy. In case of refusal by Google, there is a risk of having to ask for the intervention of the American courts, with heavy geopolitical consequences. Especially with a Donald Trump never stingy with heavy criticism of Europe, also considered an enemy of American Big Tech.


It sounds like in EU you go to court but get nothing…

[Fluff_Nutz]

Regardless though its not just the EU that is targeting Google. Now we have Australia, Japan and many other countries involved too. All wanting to remove Google's monopoly. Should this not ring alarm bells? So many different countries all wanting the same thing?

Also, the CEO of Google is, or should now, be known through everything that has been thrown across the net these past few years. He is known for bringing companies down. He's known for being in it for short term gain and long term loss. So how does someone like him get into such power? Should he not be arrested by now or something? He's caused so many issues and problems for decades. Should this also not ring alarm bells?

Also, as for Donald Trump Duck, who says he loves America so much. He should also be targeting Google. Yes, its an American company but its also destroying their and the world economy. Protect America by sorting out Google. So many people depend on Google, America included. Remove their monopoly if you don't want to remove them altogether. So then we can, hopefully, build our businesses just as well as we used to before the big Google shift. The world should not have to rely on Google for everything. Or one sole business for anything. See what happens when we do? No one would care about all of this if the monopoly didn't exist.

We should not have to create content that brings in 100s+ views per day. For a good stable month, by the way. Then these same said articles drop from their 100s+ views to a mere 30. WTF?! How is that even possible? Alas, sadly it happens. Too often in fact... Our content. Youtube included and our traffic should not be manipulated like this. I understand trends. But these were not topics on anything trending. Also, it lasted a good month until the traffic fell.

I, also, wish I hadn't but I came across a Reddit post yesterday, stating that Google is now the most profitable company in the world. As someone who got hit by their ''updates'' and still does. As Bing and the rest do not bring as much traffic in, in comparison. I suddenly have a bad taste in my mouth.

They have a big court case this August. We will see what happens. If anything..

[Conro]

@mosxu If they pursue these lawsuits, they know how to act, and Trump cannot oppose laws and judicial decisions. There's a lot of people out there who are full of money and know how to assert their rights

[RubicCubed]

Fines, even in the billions, is just a cost of doing business for Google. When Google gets hit with a big fine, they make users pay for it by forcing them to click more ads and publishers to pay for it buy spending more on ads to replace lost traffic. History tells us this is true, and will likely continue as potential "remedies" are too weak and ineffective. Substantial structural changes to Google are needed to restore law and order to the digital world (had to quote Trump). A big fine and selling off Chrome isn't enough. Google should also be forced to sell Youtube and Gmail while also divesting their interest in Android. It wouldn't hurt to charge some Google executives criminally and send them to prison, which would help deter future executives from rinsing and repeating what their predecessors did.

[longjohnbronze]

We have good protection, copyright is held in extremely high regard here, Google has real problems here (there is currently discussion about a billion-dollar fine for Google)

Ah, and then what? You and I and everyone else here get a piece of that fine? No, it'll just go into government coffers, and instead of Google stealing from us it's now the government effectively taxing us. Or at least partially, because a billion is about 3% of Google's profit in just one quarter.

[Micha]

@longjohnbronze Take a look at the ENP program. Sure, the payout is unfairly distributed, but at least Google has to pay. The billion-dollar fines may not go directly to each individual, but they send a clear message: the EU is standing idly by. And unlike in the US, Google has much less room for lobbying in Europe, and that's important. I'm not saying it's a perfect system. There's still a lot of work to be done. But it's better than nothing, and definitely better than what they in the US have. Furthermore, content theft is already being discussed in committees in Brussels, so it is on the radar.

[RubicCubed]

the payout is unfairly distributed, but at least Google has to pay.

At least some money gets distributed, which does not happen in the USA. In the USA, Government achieves big fines and keeps the money and possibly distributes some of that money to states who then keep the money themselves. So it's good that Google's payments in your country reach some victims, but we in the USA don't have that and must sue on our own. I see BBC is the latest to threaten [yahoo.com...] AI scraper Perplexity, but big media/journalism is really just a small portion of the victim pool left behind by these AI thieves.

[goodoldweb]

@Conro

Pichai is the worst CEO Google has ever had, between fines and compensation for unfair practices he has destroyed an empire......it's like entrusting Google to a Black hat world seo spammer.

Exactly my sentiment. He's turning the Google empire into one giant, low-quality MFA parastic monopoly.

[goodoldweb]

@mosxu

Too many publishers and businesses have been speaking out lately. Hopefully, the looming class actions all around the world will force the clueless SEO to reconsider his actions—or lead to his removal altogether.

[RedBar]

Insofar as my specialist widget secror is concerned it would appear that for my most popular wifgets that the USA GCAR (Google Classified Ads Rollout) is now complete.

!. Organics are almost invisible being surrounded by so many Google ads, videos, PAA and images.

2. For the USA SERPS specifically, non-USA sites have been expunged from MY top 30. Regulars here will recall I have been reporting this elimination of "foreign" sites for several years.

The very few "foreign" sites still in the SERPs have all created USA office contact locations, nothing more.

All country-specific Google SERPs have been affected but not to the extent as the USA, as yet.

[mosxu]

[instagram.com...]

There is no way raters are doing work in secret if a doggy decision is made you can’t even appeal it!

[saladtosser]

I'm coining a new phrase Google and the LLM tech bros should adopt as their official slogan going forward

"Those who can create, those that can't, prompt"!

[samwest]

On the bright side, I turned 62 last November and have applied for early retirement. However, just like Google took over search and destroyed our income, the government has mismanaged the Social Security system, which they say will be insolvent in 8 years. Figures.
Out of the 25 years I've managed to live on a web-based income, only the first 10 were great. I've said it a million times, the beginning of the end was the MayDay update (appropriately named) in May of 2010. It was all downhill since then, across all my sites. Time to soak up some rocking chair money..."Enjoy it while it lasts, because it never lasts." - SW

[RedBar]

the beginning of the end was the MayDay update (appropriately named) in May of 2010

100% agree and I have posted this several times.

The future for many current ecommerce websites looks very bleak if one is expecting an income from it therefore business brochureware sites may well become the norm, honestly it's 20+ years since we last issued printed brochures, however until G's stranglehold and manipulation is curtailed (extremely doubtful) there is basically nothing exciting whatsoever about the Net, sad but true.

[Conro]

I don't know why but it reminds me of "Saw the Riddler" but Google edition. This comment by Jm makes it clear that publishers and seo are trying, but the results? Today is fine and in a few seconds everything is lost. He seems fascinated to know that it's over for the open web, but he sadistically likes to see how publishers try to survive, like a mouse in a bucket of water trying to stay afloat even if there's no escape. [bsky.app...]

[christianz]

Record low Google traffic on Monday.

[jccsyd1]

Im wondering if any ecommerce site owners out there are experiencing the same? We had record low sales from Thursday 19/6 to Sunday 22/6 (no change in ranking), then we had a surge in sales on Monday 23/6 (6 times the number of sales compared to last Thursday/ Friday- no change in ranking) only to be back to zombie traffic Tuesday 24/6.

[Conro]

It might be of interest to those who live in the UK [reuters.com...]

[Micha]

@Conro Oh yes, please, because then the EU would definitely take a close look and adopt it.