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]

[Conro]

@Treud Google however, is not blocked because the bot that uses for ai is the same for indexing. Also this time the one who will benefit is Google, it's incredible

[Treud]

Yes it’s totally an incredible.

The Google-Extended can be blocked it will not block the normal indexing, but we still don’t know the relations between the 2.

But the biggest issues are all these training companies that overly crawl website and scrapping everything. I literally compare this with industrial fishing net, where boats scarp (and destroy everything) to catch a few fishes and discard all the dead ones.

The move from Cloudflare is a good move, but useless if not follow by other CDN.

[Micha]

@Treud AI companies must also participate; it is not beneficial if only a handful do so. This applies particularly to Google, and to be honest, I will only believe it when I see it.

[Treud]

At the moment AI companies are against this, it’s like the free all you can eat buffet is gone

[Conro]

@Treud in my opinion, bots are a block that they immediately bypass

[longjohnbronze]

I literally compare this with industrial fishing net, where boats scarp (and destroy everything) to catch a few fishes and discard all the dead ones.

It's more like big boats that catch and destroy small boats that have some fish...

[Treud]

Yes, I mean they killed many to keep some !

[Martin Ice Web]

Seems to be 2 different sets right now. One with constant traffic ( rubbish traffic ) and the other set with -80% traffic ( rubish traffic ).
In summary google is on the best way to destroy what was once their goal (to organize the internet).

[Conro]

It seems that by now the online and offline future for professions is anything that cannot be replicated by AI. Do you have any ideas about what online cannot be replicated by artificial intelligence?
Meanwhile Someone moves in the EU denouncing what Google is doing [reuters.com...]

[Gotcha]

"For the past two years, I’ve been optimizing my blog for Bing. I now get 85,000 page views per month and no longer care about Google. One of the problems we face today is that many people criticize Google, yet continue to use it—despite the existence of other search engines, especially European ones, that respect user privacy.
[tech2geek.net...]

[ichthyous]

Let's be realistic, Bing was never a viable competitor for Google and never will be. I get 86% of my web traffic from various Google properties. If you factor in image search it's even higher. Bing is an afterthought. Im getting more traffic from ChatGPT, Microsoft AI, and Perplexity than from Bing now. I will say that Bing traffic does tend to convert to actual sales inquiries, but they are such low quality and low budget customers that they are generally useless.

[mosxu]

It is the end!

Using AI agents and google search is making google search weird! Execution is not there…

Jump ship ?

[nordland]

I am positive about the future, everything about me is increasing, traffic, earnings, indexing etc... ChatGpt said a few months ago that my site had a high probability of becoming number 2 in the world in my sector, I just laughed and said it was naive and said go for it. Everything has increased a lot since that day. I just create the best I can with the help of different AI. I just adapt to reality and what people want, I don't sit around trying to fool Google into thinking I'm good.

I know you will say that my site will crash and that Google will crush it, there is no future with Google etc.. Google is the evil on this earth and more. . I don't care, I create for the users, not Google, now I'm lucky that Google boosts my traffic properly, but I'm happy that 35% of everyone who visits my website are returning direct visitors.

[puckparches]

I just create the best I can with the help of different AI. I just adapt to reality and what people want, I don't sit around trying to fool Google into thinking I'm good.

Totally agree with that mindset. I also focus on creating the best content I can, and in my case, I go a step further—I create information that AI can't replicate, and in many cases, not even another person could easily reproduce. That’s because what I share is based on hands-on experience and specialized knowledge that only comes from years in the field.

The challenge I face is that most users can’t always tell what’s legit. They often get answers from AI or Reddit, and then those answers feed each other in a loop. Eventually, even when the correct answer is 4, people start believing it’s 5 because that's what the AI and forums say.

So while I’m not trying to game Google either, I do worry about a future where correct, expert-level info is drowned out by popular but wrong content. Still, like you, I keep creating for the users—those who recognize the value stick around.

[nordland]

@puckparches. I try to produce in a similar way to you, unique things even though I use AI for writing, not facts or images, they are 100% unique, these cannot be copied.

I agree with you that a lot in, for example, Google will show errors in AI. But they will surely get better with time. Today, so many people are already misinformed regardless of Google or not, they believe a post they read on Facebook etc etc..

The number 1 news portal in my country has long had top news and what has happened since you last clicked in, this is at the top, but I scroll on and read the news anyway. I think what is happening now is very good for the internet, you get rid of people who only created to fool Google into thinking they are good.

[Micha]

you get rid of people who only created to fool Google into thinking they are good.

So, in your opinion, all the people Google is currently destroying are like that, or are they acceptable collateral damage in your eyes?

[mosxu]

@nordland

We all done that imagine,

Search will disappear like in less than 2 years no way people who use AI agents now also bother to search!

[nordland]

@Micha It's about development, there are many who have had to give way to new technological developments, it's always been that way in human history, Google is no exception. Why would Google stop developing so that old websites can survive? It's completely illogical.

What should be good in your eyes is that Google's monopoly has fallen, now there are many players acting as "search engines". One of the biggest is Tiktok, younger people are using them to an increasing extent. Instagram is another. Pinterest is one that will probably survive for a while. Chatgpt is a search engine, works well so-so right now, could be 100 times better. So don't create for Google, create for people.

@ mosxu, No, search will not disappear, however, more players like I mentioned above will take over, Google will also fulfill a function.

[Conro]

@nordland Google is a site that has always made money from the work of others. Now he is proving it even more by taking the contents of others with Gemini, aio, paa and taking the traffic away from the sources to make money, this is not legal, it goes against fair use and copyright laws. If Google wants to become a publisher, it should write things by hand as we did, not copy with a chatbot. It should also stop being a search engine in this case, because it has the responsibility of being an illegal monopoly that drives traffic to websites, if Google had not achieved the monopoly illegally probably now the traffic would have come from multiple search engines, more or less at the same level of traffic
Social networks are not even a tenth of a search engine's traffic. Many of us have social pages, but in the end they abandon themselves because the traffic is too low, We then talk about it as if social traffic were a novelty, but all professional sites have social references, so nothing new has been invented, they just don't bring enough traffic to do anything with it, maybe only with news it works, perhaps.
Chatgpt then does not bring enough traffic, same thing of perplexity and other chatbots that no one clicks on. Only seo scammers get huge traffic but they never show it. If you want you can show us, even if privately, your site, I am curious about a constantly growing site even if there is aio and the content created with artificial intelligence.

[edited by: not2easy at 12:22 pm (utc) on Jul 5, 2025]
[edit reason] Please see TOS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[Micha]

@nordland Sure, technological development has always brought change, no one disputes that. But what's happening here isn’t just “old websites can’t keep up.” It’s about a handful of companies forcibly reshaping an entire ecosystem while exploiting other people’s work without consent, compensation, or transparency. Historically, major innovations didn’t rely on quietly embedding technology into people’s lives without choice. What we’re seeing now is different: AI is being integrated aggressively, especially by Google, without offering meaningful alternatives. That’s not evolution, that’s control.

Also, the argument “don’t create for Google, create for people” sounds good, but misses a key point: If the platform between you and the people manipulates access, visibility and monetization, you have to deal with it. Saying “just ignore Google” while Google controls most of the infrastructure isn’t realistic, it’s naive. Yes, there are players like TikTok or Pinterest, but they’re not neutral public spaces eithe, they’re closed ecosystems with their own opaque logic, filters, and incentives. This isn’t healthy diversification, it’s fragmentation without accountability.

And finally: AI is anything but perfect. It makes far too many mistakes and, more importantly, it’s dangerous. New capabilities are constantly being exploited by fraudsters, propagandists, and manipulators, while meaningful safety mechanisms are still lacking.
I had hoped we’d learned something from the damage social media has already done, but clearly, we haven’t.

[Gotcha]

Ai will have to pay publishers someday

[ichthyous]

Also, the argument “don’t create for Google, create for people” sounds good, but misses a key point: If the platform between you and the people manipulates access, visibility and monetization, you have to deal with it. Saying “just ignore Google” while Google controls most of the infrastructure isn’t realistic, it’s naive.

I agree, very naive. These platforms develop and exist due to a symbiotic relationship. But once they reach a certain size that relationship ends and they become monopolies which actively work to block access and extract payment in any way possible.

Most of us are website owners, and have our entire business online. We are not 16 year olds producing viral dance videos on TikTok. Even if we were to leverage these social media platforms they really don't produce much of a return for most businesses...people go there to see lifestyle. I post to Instagram for 12 years now. My posts which show what I am doing and whom I am doing it with get more attention than posts showing products. It's a kind of mindless escapism and it doesn't translate into sales in any way. It will never replace Google search no matter how many shorts I produce. Youtube perhaps is a bit better, but I still dont see tangible sales originating from my YouTube feed, its just another way to demonstrate the product and send signals about the success of the business, and a very effective one.

So far I do see a major reduction in inquiries since about early April. Traffic remains stable, but there are no customers at all. It's hard to quantify how much of that is due to the AIO rollout since it's coming at a time when people have stopped spending on discretionary items due to political instability in the USA and Europe. I can't quite blame AI just yet.

I am seeing AI platforms referring more and more traffic though, especially ChatGPT, CoPilot and Perplexity. I am also seeing friends who already live completely by talking to their phones and receiving answers from AI services. They are paying for ChatGPT agents to run their lives already. That will spread rapidly and as it does these people will stop visiting websites for anything.

[RedBar]

And finally: AI is anything but perfect.

At the moment it is a pretty fast yet very questionable algorithmic scraper that is taking signals from other algorithms that may or may not have already concluded their answers / responses without first verifying if those decisions are indeed correct.

I see so many incorrect answers in my industry mostly emanating from the USA simply because, in my case, Google has supressed so many "foreign" sites even though those "foreign" sites are nearly always the originating widget source. Insofar as my industry is concerned bear in mind that 90+% of the widgets are imported in the USA.

For many years many USA sites in my industry have deliberately, for their own marketing purposes, twisted / distorted / exaggerated the actual facts. Ok, this was not a massive problem when genuine specialist widget sites could be found but now with G's manipulations its "AI scrapers" can be delivering garbage on top of garbage.

[gatormark]

Anywhere from 40 to 60% of AI answers are misleading or flat out incorrect.

[RedBar]

@gatormark ... From where do you get that statistic, general usage experience?

[nordland]

@ ichthyous, "We are not 16 year olds producing viral dance videos on TikTok." This shows that you have no idea how social media works, like Tiktok. I understand that many struggle when they want everything to be like it used to be, everything was better before! The reality is that AI will make the internet so much better, remove all the nonsense that has been written, probably 99.8% of all publishing in the past has just been a recreation of other people's work over and over again..

Everyone can do what they want, I intend to embrace technology and create the best I can, hopefully I will get many visitors to my website, if I don't get that then it will have to be a hobby, not a job.

I just sat down and created a podcast with Google, NotebookLM, it's absolutely crazy what they can create with just a little info, a podcast of many minutes of my articles, fantastic. It took me 10 minutes, no need to know the language or even speak, absolutely perfect. Of course you have to fact-check the end result.

[danma45]

Overall traffic is going up in Bing, and completely opposite on Google.

[Conro]

@nordland According to you, the internet is 99.8% made up of recycled material, but people write about what they know on their sites And this method has been successful because people love websites. Those who copy the work of others en masse and without control are the LLMs. So Google says, in my index many sites talk about the same topic, now I copy everything and rewrite it in an artificial answer, without images, without control, just an exact copy of the sites that had already covered that topic. Do you think AI is the future of the internet? Without sites the llms are not exist, Google not exist. Users if they preferred llms to websites would use Gemini, it can be used in all Androids, millions and millions of devices, instead Gemini has a very small number of users, as a Copilot, users, however, continue to use Google search engines to search for things in sites instead of Gemini, it is evident that Google once realized the failure of gemini despite having put it everywhere, decided to put aio in the foreground of its search engine to force people to use it, at the cost of killing the hand that fed them which is the web

[goodoldweb]

@nordland

And how many people listened to that "podcast" except you?

[nordland]

More than 100 and that's good considering I haven't even posted it on my own website, haven't advertised it, just tried to post it on Youtube.