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]

@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.