July 2025 Google Search Observations

[Martin Ice Web]

And like every time, google lies about he start of this core update. It definitly started on friday.
And again it rewards old fashion, low content, bad html websites. Even websites with no pics or pictures smaller than 300 width are rewarded.

[edited by: not2easy at 11:55 am (utc) on Jul 1, 2025]
[edit reason] New month, new thread [/edit]

[Micha]

@Martin Ice Web It definitely started on Friday. However, in my niche, it seems to be pushing small websites, i.e. spam websites. It would be something new if useful information were being pushed. It is also noticeable that AI responses appear more and more frequently when searching for word meanings. However, they rarely explain things correctly.

[Juzi]

@mosxu

I sometimes think that too. But I’ve already spent two years in this industry…

[Martin Ice Web]

We are seeing a little drop in traffic but a hughe drop in conversions. That is something that is now common within updates. Conversions vanish directly with the start and bots from all over the world eating up our server power.

[Martin Ice Web]

@Micha, can´t see small website beeing pushed. Our niche is now full of manufactures websites where you can´t buy from. Some of them looking like the are direclty copied from the late 90s.

[Micha]

@Martin I'm only seeing this in three niches at the moment, so it's probably just a coincidence. However, I've just noticed that many of the URLs listed by Google lead to 404 pages. However, since the update has only just started (Friday), everything is constantly changing at the moment.

[RubicCubed]

Google traffic now makes up about 20% of my total, down from 90% just a few months ago.

Google's relevance to us has faded and faded fast. This will surely come back to bite them as the lack of traffic produces a lack of incentive for us to create content, follow Google's guidance down the road and of course pay them for ads after what they did to us.

I'm confident I'll adapt

I'm not so confident. In the past traffic losses due to a drop in rankings was recoverable in time. Now our traffic losses are the result of Google's wholesale data theft for AI O. This genie is out of the bottle and can't be stuffed back into it. Adapting for most I fear will be leaving the industry altogether since the opportunity to earn a living online is being vacuumed dry by Google. It's clear that Google wants all the traffic and money. I can only hope the rapid damage Google inflicted on the entire web will result in Google Rot where they too meet their own demise from having destroyed the foundation the web was built upon (us and what we once produced).

[Fluff_Nutz]

Hm.. thoughts?...

[blog.cloudflare.com ]

[EditorialGuy]

"Pay per Crawl" is an interesting concept, and kudos to Cloudflare for testing it. I can't see the big AI companies going for it unless they're forced to, but I'd love to be proven wrong.

[christianz]

I can't see the big AI companies going for it unless they're forced to, but I'd love to be proven wrong.

By definition they will be forced to. Otherwise block.

[christianz]

the rapid damage Google inflicted on the entire web will result in Google Rot where they too meet their own demise from having destroyed the foundation the web was built upon

Absolutely. The rot is real. Non-branded searches in most search engines are no longer viable. You have to know which website you want to target. Otherwise its just junk. The keyword -> text matching is terrible. Worse than ever. Not even remotely possible to do exact match and nuanced queries.

[gatormark]

Today will be the lowest day of revenue in 13 years. :-(

[breeks]

When you think your revenue can not get any lower, it does. I struggle to meet the minimum payment each month. Went from thousands, to hundreds, to 100. But it was a good run :)

[Conro]

Today I found ai overview even when I expanded "people also ask". By now they are putting it everywhere and it is useless, like today I discovered that it is enough to use baking soda to eliminate odors from the septic moat (perhaps with a few quintals of baking soda, otherwise it would be better to have it emptied)

[frostitomik]

Traffic on one of my newest websites. The number of visits from Google speaks for itself. Google = Evil, lol

[i.imgur.com...]

[Martin Ice Web]

today traffic is -30%. remaining traffic is 100% zombies.

This must be 100% a serps quality update for poeple to find 100% what they are looking for.

[saladtosser]

My traffic continues its downward SLOPE trend day by day, slow and steady from 5k clicks before AIO (AIO stands for Artificial *Infringement* Overviews right?) to 500 ish, impressions and positions remain unchanged just the decouple in effect!

[Micha]

I’m in the same boat: traffic has dropped on my sites. And then I find one of my articles copied 1:1 by Google’s AI search, which is a clear copyright violation. But as a small publisher, you know there’s nothing you can really do about it. I’m honestly fed up today ...

[RedBar]

I have to bring up stats programmes again.

According to Statcounter my local .co.uk site is now getting more traffic than any of my global .com sites however both Awstats and Webalizer are showing me completely different things and seem to be very consistent.

Even if I were to agree that 50% of my .com traffic is "rogue", the .coms still easily beat the .co.uk and, believe this or not, indicating pretty normal traffic levels for the time of year.

Statcounter does honour do not follow / track instructions, are there that many users who have battened down their devices especially mobile?

Does anyone else see this huge disparity in their metrics?

[Fluff_Nutz]

My traffic is also weird and, apparently, broken on Analytics. For the most part traffic is stable. With anywhere between 2-5% drops every day. Not exactly dying but there is noticeable drops. Same over on Youtube. So I assume this is normal.

However, Analytics isn't showing correct traffic data in comparison to my revenue provider. I, apparently, get more traffic than previously thought and what is shown in Analytics. Google Organic has also increased for me too. They currently sit in 6th spot for traffic sources. They did used to be first. A long time ago.

Also, revenue over here is also low. It's a low RPM month for me anyway, regardless. But its lower than expected. But what got me thinking is that do advertisers still depend on organic views? If so that could be the real reason. Also, if that is the case its, also, disappointing too. We, now, live in an age where viewers come in from all over. Mobile. Social. Depending on organic views still is really frustrating and old. For me, at present, social traffic is my top form of traffic. Advertisers really need to move on if they only like organic views. More so with the current situation right now.

Anyway quick question for those with more experience..

I am seeing a (Not Set) in my analytics information. Its high traffic too. Enough for 7th place in my overall traffic source list, as of last month. Just below Google Organic. What worries me though, is that it has low 0% Engaged Sessions, 0% Engagement Rate, 37s Engagement Time and 639 Event Count. Are these bots? Or actual viewers? Traffic for it also seems to be increasing for it too. Only yesterday it managed to become my second main source of traffic. Which is a first for this particular source of whatever.

This kicked in end of May and became more frequent throughout June. So slightly after the release of Google Android AI Chat. Which I have seen visit the site. So I'd like to think its viewers using Google AI. So if anyone can or know the answer to that. Greatly Appreciated!

My Analytics is not really set up for mobile. I also have both Gemini and Perplexity showing. But nothing on Google AI. Despite my site telling me viewers are coming in from their AI Android Chat. So confusing..

[BigKat]

The rot is real. Non-branded searches in most search engines are no longer viable.

I agree. The ability for users to "explore the web" is quickly being replaced by a user containment box (prison) that only contains what's in the best interest of that engine.

[longjohnbronze]

The new update increased traffic by ca. 10-20% vs. last week, but it's still about 30-40% lower than this year last time. As is often the case, I can't see a pattern in the traffic increase; some categories and pages won, some (but fewer) lost.

[Micha]

It doesn't look good here. The update seems to be boosting large publishers in Germany and sweeping away small ones. Rankings have completely collapsed, Discover is dead, and our “leading media” are dominating my niche with repeated news (and complete nonsense at that); you can't see anything else anymore. If this continues until the end, well, bon appétit...

[Fluff_Nutz]

Turns out that my issues, as posted above, may indeed be bots. A bot invasion from multiple countries. Going by Reddit I'm not alone in seeing this. Here's me hoping Google had turned a new leaf and decided to bring us traffic through their AI. I am deluded. They are incapable of doing the right thing.

Both the bot invasion and Social traffic are the only things keeping my traffic up. Both Bing and G decided to drop. I find it strange how both decide to drop together. Instead of one dropping and the other bringing in traffic.

I have lost motivation again this week.

[ichthyous]

My traffic has generally been higher, however it has resulted in zero (yes zero) new customer inquiries since the 24th of June. Business is non-existent since the beginning of June basically. April and May were miserable but at least there were new customer inquiries. This level of activity is commensurate with a recession, but apparently the US economy keeps ticking. I think people may not be getting fired yet, but if you ask small businesses spending slowed down dramatically by April.

I have no idea how much if this is impacted by OAI, since my traffic has not sunk below last year's levels on most days.

[RedBar]

I'm giving up with Statcounter since I've just had a minimum 14-18 hour outage from UK 17.00 Wednesday meanwhile Awstats and Webalizer are running consistently my normal averages.

[mosxu]

@Juzi

So I have been 20 years in the same industry


On a different note for anyone who cracked G algorithm let me tell you 100% crypto is easier!

[puckparches]

For the past two years, our traffic has been declining every month, and now it's almost gone. I kind of knew this would happen, and I was somewhat prepared—but it still hurts. Sometimes I still can't believe I used to make 20 times what I make now.

Some days, traffic goes up a couple of percentage points, and I even get a bit excited, thinking, This could be it—we're turning things around. But then the next day, it drops even more, and I'm brought back to reality. This really is the end. LLMs have actually broken the internet.

[Conro]

Yesterday 40 clicks from Google, now I receive more traffic from Bing (60 clicks), but it is very little even if on Bing the site is well positioned in the top positions, it appears in the AI answers. I then find myself with fewer and fewer backlinks because sites are closing or Google is deindexing their pages. It is impossible if not buying links continuously to keep up,Why even the loss of backlinks causes a loss of positions on Google.

[Treud]

Cloudflare just rolled out the block of IA scrapper crawler.
My traffic (total) dropped by 80% and bandwidth by 20%.

Google traffic is stable, Bing catching up. !