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]

[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.

[Micha]

@norrdland First of all: Sure, you can do whatever you want. But as someone who creates podcasts myself, I have to say: What you're doing here is taking an easy shortcut to generate content. But a podcast is more than just spoken information, it's about personality, perspective, and thoughtful presentation. If an AI produces a podcast without your voice or active involvement, it’s not a genuine podcast. It’s just an audio playback of text. And that carries the risk of spreading content without proper context or depth.

Even more important: just a few posts ago, you said you're creating for people, not for Google. But this? This doesn’t feel like it’s made for people. And it undermines the creative effort that goes into building something like this without AI.

[mosxu]

I don’t think is possible to make money creating content anymore AI will be selective on content will adopt!

Sellers should have own engine product comparison maybe where they can offer a discount instead of paying for ads! Buyers will come anywhere for a discount!

[Conro]

With the new update, a technology site that I thought was untouchable is losing more than 10% of traffic. He always continued to do what he did, is a site whose owner is well known, but something with the new update did not please Google, but it could be AIOs, even if I notice a gradual decline in keywords.
A other site that had probably been hit by hcu, also of technology, is recovering a lot of traffic, at the moment it is +70%. What did he do? What he always did before the penalty he received, he reduced the number of articles updated or published every day to one or two, probably because he was demotivated, he then added social and video channels. I don't know if social media can make a big difference, this is because they don't have great involvement in this case, I never notice any other substantial changes. I can't see unfortunately if it has received any major new backlinks. Anyway something is moving, but I can't find a sense in the choice of Google's algorithms, As with the other times, it seems a matter of luck

[Micha]

My news page is recovering, Discover traffic is returning, and the ranking has improved overall. So, we've made it through the first week, but we still have two weeks of updates to go.
The shop is running slowly, and I haven't seen any changes so far.

[haramamba]

Unless users take action, Android will let Gemini access third-party apps

Starting today, Google is implementing a change that will enable its Gemini
AI engine to interact with third-party apps, such as WhatsApp, even when users
previously configured their devices to block such interactions. Users who don't
want their previous settings to be overridden may have to take action.

[arstechnica.com ]

[Conro]

I didn't install the Gemini app on my phone, just because I was expecting something like this. However, it is present in the Messages application, where I have deactivated Gemini, but it is still present. Disabling the Google app should also deactivate the Gemini app, but the problem is that phone restarts may occur at least once a day

[RedBar]

I hesitate as I type this however my traffic yesterday and today seems to be relatively "normal" and especially so for this time of year, fingers crossed.

[faiyu]

I honestly believe that for some sites....a classifier which had been applied post HCU has been lifted...

[Conro]

@Faiyu Yes, there are sites that are getting traffic again, they were not sites that deserved to be penalized. Before dreaming, however, it is better to wait for the end of update and the days immediately after the conclusion to see what happens.

[christianz]

Huge drop in traffic around 8th and 9th.

I honestly believe that for some sites....a classifier which had been applied post HCU has been lifted...

Which is bad news because for each good site that HCU hit, there were at least 9 SEO/spam sites that were also hit, and it was the only Google update that actually worked in the past decade (or more).

Maybe Google is reintroducing all that spam/slop to make web results (or what little is left of them in the SERP) even more insufferable so that users would be trained to rely more on the Slop Overviews.

[Shepherd]

Had a massive crawl spike on 2 July and traffic has all but disappeared since....

[Micha]

After a good day, my news site lost 90% of its visibility according to Sistrix. But the main thing is AI responses and spam nonsense... It's just frustrating.

[christianz]

It's just frustrating.

It's nauseating. We are in the most nauseating and absurd industry ever.

[lewis1]

Over last 3 days, my main site heavily hit by HCU is making a strong recovery. Interestingly, we haven't made any changes to it. We did make changes to it after HCU and then reverted it back to how it was pre HCU as it shouldn't have been penalised in the first place. Only difference is that previously we were running a lot of AdSense on the site and now we're not. I don't think that's what's helped but hope the trend continues and surviess throughout the core update rollout. Let's see.

[Conro]

I finally see specialized sites that are climbing back up in the rankings, sites that were in the first places only because of their name or because ugc are leaving room again for sites that know what they are talking about. However, we are still in the middle of the update and despite the improvement in position it will be difficult due to aio and paa and YouTube and reddit, that traffic increases for all sites that have had an improvement in ranking. AIO in particular is the death of the web

[Martin Ice Web]

We all know that while an core update is runing, filters being lifted. Current traffic, positions right now will not stay this way.
Wait two, three days after the cu finished and all filters have been applied.

[Fluff_Nutz]

It's nice. Whatever is going on right now. All of my traffic sources have increased. Including positions and Organic search from both G and Bing. Almost makes me think I'm being botted. But GSC reads the same outcome as analytics. Is this false hope though?

For the past few weeks my top performing article has had nice traffic spikes. Not often. Usually once a week. Also, as Analytics just pointed out to me. On June 20th this exact same article dropped by 70%. For no real reason. They have been toying with these filters for a while I think.

EDIT: Also, for the amount of traffic I got yesterday. According to Analytics. The revenue and RPM doesn't match. My revenue stays at its usual average. Whilst, according to Analytics, traffic increases way beyond the usual average? Something doesn't add up here. Seems a bit suspicious.

[Conro]

The demonstration that AI does not bring traffic worthy of attention to the websites from which they take information. Tell that to seos who want to scam you by saying that ai traffic is very important to get visits, tell Google that too when it says it sends billions of clicks to websites with AIO [gsqi.com...]

[Fluff_Nutz]

Whilst its nice to see people writing and sharing their experiences on the traffic increase. I really hope they are looking at Google and not overall traffic. There are a lot of bots out right now. I'm currently seeing a huge spike in Direct traffic from German bots. I'm also seeing people over on Reddit with these same bot issues.

Traffic statistics in general seem to be all over the place. A lot of us over on Reddit also don't fully understand the (Not Set) traffic which arrived earlier this month. Again, quite a few of us are seeing it but have no idea if its bots or something else entirely. Its been showing itself in my Analytics feed for several days now.

[seroundtable.com ]

[Conro]

@Fluff_Nutz The sites I'm checking and they have had an increase in traffic have also had an increase in keywords positioned in the top positions (Some a major increase). If traffic increases but keywords are stable or decreasing, it is likely to be bot traffic, or maybe aio doesn't show up or paa has been lowered a few positions or they have removed some YouTube videos, so it's hard to understand. But there could also be other reasons

[Treud]

My traffic increased a lot bit it’s not Google. We identified some bots, we GeoIP blocked regions. It’s started around 10 days ago, it’s still high but it’s a fight we can’t win as they are too many …

[EditorialGuy]

Our Google traffic has been volatile in general for a while now. It went up sharply right when the June Core Update was announced, then dipped over the July 4 holiday weekend in the U.S. before starting to climb again yesterday. Today is looking strong, but who knows what tomorrow will bring?

[EditorialGuy]

Google traffic to our long-established editorial travel site has been volatile in general for a while now. It went up sharply right when the June Core Update was announced, then dipped over the July 4 holiday weekend in the U.S. before starting to climb again yesterday. Today is looking strong, but who knows what tomorrow will bring?

FWIW, our top 10 or 20 pages are mostly the same from day to day.

[saladtosser]

I’ve noticed that sites hit by the Helpful Content Update (HCU) in my hobby/passion niche often bounce back to Page One during a core update but vanish again a week or so after the update finishes, seeing it now, maybe it sticks this time.

I’m also seeing far fewer “AIO” (Artificial Infringement Overview), which is encouraging. Maybe Google has finally realised that large language models (LLMs) aren’t true artificial intelligence, and those relying on “AI” as a catch-all excuse won’t be able to hide behind it when the lawyers come knocking.

Six months ago I predicted that LLMs would end up like 3D movies, a fad destined to fade, and, looking at social media the backlash seems to be happening.

On a personal note, I recently dove into mobile app development. After weeks of going in circles trying to learn BASICS solely through AI, I finally bought a foundational Udemy cours and it was a game-changer. LLMs are a valuable tool, but only if you already have a solid grasp of what you’re doing and a clear idea of the solution you need. In my day-to-day work with ASP.NET Core, AI supplements my expertise beautifully but when you’re starting from zero, it just spins you around, you have to know the rough answer for LLMs to be useful .

On the plus side, when this LLM craze inevitably fades, we saw exactly how these G treated us when they thought they could replace us so we need to make inroads into other non G search related traffic, which is why I want to build an app.

It’s like being married to someone who almost left you for another partner on empty promises that fell through, would you really trust them going forward, would they be looking for the next off ramp? Start planning your exit from G no matter how this pans out, we know they don't have a care in the world about dumping everyone at the first hint on an alternative. I know which path I’m choosing and an app is better than any newsletter the SEO's are promoting you push, how many of us read newsletters, im constantly blocking them lol Sadly for SEOS in general they cant code they rely on fluff! An SEO that codes your site from the ground up, that's a different story!

[ichthyous]

On the plus side, when this LLM craze inevitably fades...

Not going to fade... There are trillions of investment dollars from tech giants and nations like Saudi Arabia and the UAE that will ensure that it just keeps expanding and getting crammed down the world's throat. We are past the stage of participatory adoption, we are in the forced adoption phase. The financial incentives are just too enormous and self perpetuating.

Also, have you seen anyone using agentic AI? I have, and more and more people are moving towards that and paying for it. They wont search for anything anymore, they very rapidly slip into allowing the Ai bot run their entire life. The bots are so slick and so human sounding that I believe that even though people know it's not a human they still feel an almost human connection to these agents.

That's how they will hook many billions of people... By becoming their best and most trusted friend. It's quite scary to see, but you can't say that it doesn't offer a huge amount of information to people that they wouldn't have otherwise accessed before. I have one friend that has his Ai bot even connected to all his medical records and it can pull up any tests over time and make comparisons between them. It says "Tim, your LDL cholesterol has increased in your latest blood test... You might want to consider eating less meat and cheese". Add on top of that scheduling, recommendations, etc and this is no joke, it's that powerful and useful to many people and they will continue to adopt it.

People who are comparison shopping will still probably use Amazon, apps and sites though.

[Gotcha]

I rank very well on Bing but I'm dead on Google hhhh ( 80k pages/view us traffic
Google in May until the beginning of June indexed all the links on my blog 300 articles while I lost hope and I focused on Bing then on June 15 it desidexes everything Again ? I don't understand anything in short it's not a reliable source of traffic

[ichthyous]

Whatever Google is doing has made the new customers disappear for months. The traffic picked up but very few inquiries at all. Not sure if Google has gotten better at nabbing customers or if it's more the Trump tariff insanity throwing a bucket of cold water on people's urge to spend, or both.

[mosxu]

Tariffs? Updates? Are we all tapped?

All it is spreading is the very very little left traffic that is not questionable!

How much percentage is it questionable?

Common guys get a a job!

[Treud]

Traffic is better but customers are not yet back …

[christianz]

Traffic is awful. Started nosediving on July 7th.

Meanwhile my satellite site which somewhat plagiarizes my main (high quality established) site has popped a little bit. Consistent with what appears to be minor Unhelpful Content Update (UCU), promoting content made primarily for Google.

Are we going to see a new wave of "searchers add reddit to search terms to get real human results" headlines in the news after this update is done, or is this just a transient state of partial ranking brain disablement that makes Google act like it forgot which websites are real?

I guess they are rolling out some replacement for the HCU filter (and others) that works on different principles and it is not working too well.

[Micha]

This core update has really been a rollercoaster for my news site. At first, everything was going fine, then things took a nosedive, but since Friday, rankings have clearly improved and visitor numbers have shot up.

One thing I’ve noticed though: ever since the update started, AI-generated answers have been showing up more frequently on Google in Germany. But honestly, I don’t get how Google thinks that’s helpful. Out of 10 answers, 2 are summaries missing the important half, and the other 8 are complete nonsense.

[Whitey]

I’m seeing similar traffic spikes as shown in GSC screenshots shared here (a few more weeks of this update to go I guess): [seroundtable.com...]

[Fluff_Nutz]

After finally managing to remove the German bot invasion, or, at least, block them for now. My traffic is still quite nice. Cannot complain. But even with Google's slight traffic increase they only manage 5th place in my list of sources. So no real change in position for them. I'm enjoying my other stable baskets of traffic right now too.

So far traffic is good all around. Has been going good since July 4th. Would love to keep this up.. alas..

[mhansen]

Google is wild... and it makes no sense.

BusinessDomain#1.com - HCU recovered website for +1 year that I removed all informational content and only had interactive tools... built a solid Brand around, etc - dropping like a hot potato, losing all rankings in top 3 positions and traffic over the weekend.

exactmatchspamdomain#2.com - 15 year old EMD, purely generic informational lead-gen affiliate website that lost 50% of traffic from HCU in August 2022, then the other 50% in Sept 2023 HCU... just gained back every top 3 position it ever held, and is converting visitors to affiliate leads like a kid in a candy store with a no-limit credit card.

I mean, I'll take it, and I'll also re-establish all 6-7 of those other previously high performance lead-gen generics I took down after Sept 2023, and reset them to their original junk content, but cmon Google... whats up with all this? Who's running things over there?

[Shepherd]

What a crazy update...
massive crawl on the July 2nd.
traffic plummet shortly after (hard to pinpoint because of US holiday)
core vitals' "good urls" number starts plummeting 11th, no change in "bad" or "needs improvement" urls, both 0. no significant change in indexed pages, slight increase in "Crawled - currently not indexed" pages.

[Conro]

Let's imagine that Google's AI has ruined the most popular search engine in the world, now let's imagine to the countries where social scoring is used, who knows what disaster AI can do.

[mosxu]

“social scoring” is personalisation in the western countries, everyone has a profile that AI might use one day!

LLMs so far make me not think and when I use google search it feels ancient!

[nordland]

I think AI will be good in Google search, of course it will take time to get it perfect. I think many people here dislike it because it takes away clicks to your website. As a user, you probably want to get quick information without having to visit 5 different websites. I look positively at the future and adapt.

[christianz]

I look positively at the future and adapt

If you haven't created anything of value that so called "AI" has stolen, spun and monetized, of course you can "look positively at the future".

As for adapting - yes creators and publishers will gradually adapt and lock things down and eventually Google's AI will become even worse than it is today.

Or Google will come up with actual business model that isn't based on criminal theft.

[EditorialGuy]

As a user, you probably want to get quick information without having to visit 5 different websites.

It depends. Not every user is looking for a quick answer.

Take something like how to get from Widgetville Airport to the city center: For some users, "Take the no. 6 bus" is enough. For others, the best response to the query is a Web page with detailed instructions with photos.

And, of course, if a person is actively searching for Web sites about a given topic, Web search--not AI Overviews--is what's needed.