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]

[EditorialGuy]

Addendum to my previous message:

Google AI Overviews are a search-oriented version of Wikipedia, just as Wikipedia is a Web-oriented version of Encyclopedia Britannica. There's a place for the encyclopedia approach to information, but that doesn't mean Google AIO will replace the Web any more than Encyclopedia Britannica replaced books during the heyday of print.

[ichthyous]

Anyone else noticing that Google is dropping huge numbers of links from GSC reports? My backlink count keeps dropping each time it updates.

[BigKat]

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.

As a user I don't trust a self-serving company convicted of multiple antitrust crimes to display answers that are in my best interest. We adapt to the environment as well by raising prices which helps offset the traffic loss associated with Google's IP theft.

[Conro]

@ichthyous I have talked about it several times. In my case they are sites that have closed or deindexed articles or backlinks no longer considered. I find myself with only 50 domains linking to me now, obviously the rankings have had a drop for this reason too.

[Micha]

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.

Because I like eating pizza with glue or eating rocks? You hear from all sides that users don't want AI crap, but Google doesn't care. And from a user's perspective: anyone who trusts Google has lost control of their life; everyone knows that you should never trust just one source.

And regarding what else you wrote: Could it be that you have never done any independent research yourself, but only work with AI? To be honest, it sounds like it.

[goodoldweb]

Google is toast. Run into the ground by an incompetent CEO. We've had to hike prices across our webstores more then once just to offset Sundar’s Adwords extortion and blatant content theft.

Meanwhile, we got a couple of sales this week from a search engine called Qwant — never heard of it before, but it actually delivered.Great localised results too. Wow!

What’s the story there?

[ichthyous]

@conro In my case the sites and the links are still up, they haven't been deleted at all. They're just dropping from GSC in big numbers.

[gatormark]

As a user I don't trust a self-serving company convicted of multiple antitrust crimes to display answers that are in my best interest. We adapt to the environment as well by raising prices which helps offset the traffic loss associated with Google's IP theft.

Because you are not the average user. The average user doesn’t care about the things Webmasters care about. Yes, they want quick information…if they are searching for information.

Even I, as a web developer, want quick information. The difference is, I know not to trust quick information. Average users do not know that.

[goodoldweb]

@gatormark

Most everyday users I speak to have noticed that Google Search is out of whack. It’s gotten so much harder to find and compare products or reliable information with all the Reddit clutter. And the AI-generated answers? Often just plain wrong. Google's a mess — and Joe Public absolutely noticed.

[Martin Ice Web]

big changes started on monday night. Bots toke over, google traffic is -70% , sales are down , user engagement is zero.
All the current websites have one thing in common: very, very, very low content. One low res picture + h1 + lots of keyword stuffing
This current state is just the opposite of what google says it wants websites to be

[Treud]

My bot traffic is under control since a week, not sure if it’s all actions taken or if it’s just done (for now), my major KWs recovered a bit, but nowhere since last year but the increase is there. I see finally improvements, inquiries and orders.

[Fluff_Nutz]

Once again its the same with Youtube. Many of its users are getting sick and tired of the ad spam and are wanting an alternative platform. No one likes ad spam regardless. So I won't be surprised if, over time, users on both Youtube and Search decline. No one wants false and inaccurate AI answers. No one wants false translations and, obviously, no one wants ad spam.

For me Google Search only lands in 5th place in my list of traffic sources. So I don't really need to rely on them any more. I'm also seeing a shift to other diverse options on my Youtube channel too. In my attempts to escape their traffic manipulation. Though, Youtube is a lot more stable still, when compared to search. Even though they are continuing to destroy both platforms.

Though, my overall motivation has took a huge hit. I'm trying and hoping that my diverse options can keep me going. But it will forever be in the back of my mind. The 'what if?' I really don't want to go through another episode of this situation in the future. There should also be something in place to protect content creators. The world is so goddam corrupt.

Also, I only just recently found out that Youtube even takes a % of revenue from Memberships. I swear, when I first accepted it, that the creators gets the full 100%. Did I misread? Also, the option to Download videos is annoying and infuriating too. Users have been able to ''download'' any and all videos for a while now, all for a small fee. A fee that creators do not see. But its our content!

It really is slave labour. We work hard to create content for our own personal gain. I have some videos waiting to be uploaded, which took a year of work to complete. Some other videos take months. I know I work too hard for what I get in return. We all loose what we should be seeing and getting due to sheer corporate greed. So what are we even working for, exactly? Can't do it for profits as its taken from us. Traffic manipulation, so doing it for users is also quite pointless.

All, we creators want, is a stable platform owned by a stable company. Alas, even if one occurs (TikTok) the Americans try to ban it for their own selfish desires. Coming up with a lame excuse for their true intentions. So, ultimately, we creators are not allowed what we desperately need. To make it worse we need American users as its one of the biggest Tier 1 countries. Which ad platforms also want and need. How do we even compete with this garbage?

[RubicCubed]

I look positively at the future and adapt.

I would be positive too if I worked for Google or had a lot of stocks in the company. But for the rest of humanity, not so. Having AI O at the top of search results is one thing, but AI is taking over organic results too. A recent ahref study [ahrefs.com...] found only 13.5% of top ranking pages were made purely by humans. Nearly 28% of top ranking pages were either substantially or purely made with AI. We are witnessing the decline of human creativity which will also lead to a decline in human intelligence. AI may be viewed as getting more intelligent in the future not just because it has become smarter, but because humanity as a whole has just been dummied down by AI.

[Micha]

@Fluff_we are extremely dependent on the Google ecosystem and there are hardly any alternatives. It's clear that Google is exploiting this situation; it's always been that way. Now they're just taking it too far because the company feels too secure and unassailable.

[gatormark]

@goodoldweb

I’m a user experience engineer, too, and user testing has shown that the average user looks for quick answers and does not know not to trust AI overviews. Personally, I educate people every opportunity I get. However, the “average user,” a 40-year-old stay at home mom in Poughkeepsie, still does not know not to trust things like AI overviews.

[ichthyous]

Here is an excellent and well-documented piece from the Economist regarding the rapid shrinking of the web due to AI - [economist.com ]. It's behind a paywall unfortunately, but well worth reading...if you send me a message I can send a link to read it as I am a subscriber (up to 15 free reads only).

To sum up, web traffic is already down 15% so far this year to informational sites, with health related sites being hit hardest at -30%. [ibb.co ]

DotDash Meredith, a huge publishing conglomerate with numerous high traffic sites, reports that the share of traffic from Google has dropped to 30%. Down from 60% three years ago. The number of searches leading to no-clicks out has risen to 70% since AI Overviews were introduced last year. The majority of outbound clicks were to Youtube videos. We are basically competing for the remaining traffic, and that will most certainly shrink over time.

There is some positive news in the article...there are compensatory schemes and technologies being cooked up, some of which are already in place. Cloudflare is working on a system where AI bots will have to pay to access website pages apparently. But really, will any of these platforms bother to pay for sites they have already scraped?

I feel for those of you running purely informational sites. I have a site which is basically a hybrid...sales platform and informational...sales of products, services and free articles. I have definitely seen the traffic to the articles drop off in the last 6 months. Overall my traffic is holding steady, but there won't be much incentive to create new informational articles in the long run.

[ichthyous]

Search traffic has been lower since Monday, reversing the generally higher trend. A rollback of the latest update in progress? My site has been steadily gaining top three ranking terms (if that really means anything anymore). But it is bleeding backlink count at GSC. Either Google is discounting links now, or just not bothering to devote resources to count them. AI is far more important now than calculating backlinks perhaps...

[BigKat]

But it is bleeding backlink count at GSC. Either Google is discounting links now, or just not bothering to devote resources to count them.

Or backlinks are lost due to sites shutting down because Google has starved them of the traffic they need to pay the bills. With AIO dominating a user's screen, backlinks probably aren't worth anything unless they send traffic. Heck, even ranking #1 for us is worthless because of AIO.

[webdev29]

The last few days are really special. We can clearly see the pattern where Google manipulates traffic as it sees fit, and its ability to do so has become impressive.
For my part, I've noticed on several e-commerce sites that all the traffic that converts is able to disappear for a whole day, and come back the following day or only during a time slot (ON/OFF effect). All this without any major changes in the SERP and, above all, without the slightest drop in traffic!
AI-driven A/B testing has become a real guillotine for sales. In fact, I'd bet that in these update periods, “scared” customers are flocking to ADS.

[ichthyous]

@webdev My sales are effectively zero since April. But I think that this has equally as much to do with the current unstable political/economic climate driven by Washington. My sales were zooming from November to end of March. Odd how that worked. So yes Google is definitely always impacting sales, but for those of us selling higher priced discretionary goods it's all about economic and political sentiment right now. I see even businesses in my field that are not as dependent on online sales and search doing very poorly now. Sales have cratered.

[christianz]

There is some positive news in the article...there are compensatory schemes and technologies being cooked up, some of which are already in place. Cloudflare is working on a system where AI bots will have to pay to access website pages apparently.

When / if I implement that scheme, Googlebot is not going to get any special treatment. Because, increasingly, it is not providing me any value, just like OpenAI, Anthropic or any other of those bots that do not yield any traffic and never will yield any traffic. Google has to get used to not being welcome on most websites, because they are parasitic scraper like any other parasitic scraper that does not respect intellectual property rights.

[RedBar]

What on earth is going on?

My global widget site has lit up today like a Xmas tree with US traffic so far at 60.3%

This is how things used to be. I wonder if this will continue through the night?

[christianz]

What on earth is going on?

Worst traffic figures I have seen in years, that's what's going on. GA realtime is glitched out but still the numbers are record low.

You would never tell they are low by looking at server logs - the server is as busy as it has ever been. But record high share of that is various scraper bots, scraping gigabytes of data daily.

[mosxu]

We have a dead cat bouncing at the moment! The minute Apple brings own AI the cat will stop bouncing!

Most of us need to move on now!

[ichthyous]

Or backlinks are lost due to sites shutting down because Google has starved them of the traffic they need to pay the bills. With AIO dominating a user's screen, backlinks probably aren't worth anything unless they send traffic. Heck, even ranking #1 for us is worthless because of AIO.

I just responded to @Conro's similar comment. This is not the case. The sites are still up and so are the links. They just aren't being counted anymore.

I will say that one large source of backlinks to my site shut down last year. Their traffic was deflating like a balloon over the course of the last several years despite very well crafted and unique editorial. They got into financial trouble and sold to a competitor for a low amount (I know because I was the highest bidder for the site at one point, but canceled when I saw their operating costs and problematic design issues).

[Whitey]

This is how things used to be. I wonder if this will continue through the night?

Fingers crossed. Another week to go.

[seokees]

June core update '25 has finished. My sites are decimated for the time being, it seems.:(

[Whitey]

Well this finished a week earlier than i expected.

June core update '25 has finished. My sites are decimated for the time being, it seems.:(

@seokees Sorry to hear this, as always winners and losers. But hopefully some data will come in over the next few days to get an idea of what factors were in play.

What on earth is going on?

My global widget site has lit up today like a Xmas tree with US traffic so far at 60.3%

@redbar - hopefully you are enjoying an early Xmas :)

Traffic for us is 2-3x up. However, still a long way to go, but it's a good start considering what we've been through. We were not hit by last years HCU 's btw.

[seroundtable.com...]

[saladtosser]

Looking at the SERPS after this core update, testing some random phrases like "Builders London" and other such terms, running the sites through lighthouse and backlink checkers its clear the winner were the big brands, middlemen who sell leads and independent sites who have the very worst lighthouse scores and backlinks I have ever seen. Its hard to gage what quality metric they are using on this one, brand mentions maybe? Its certainly not CWV/UX/Accessibility/Usability or a good backlink profile, very odd!

[haramamba]

@saladtosser

running the sites through lighthouse

I'm testing competitors in lighthouse and I don't understand how some websites with 70/50/60/90 score and 4.9s speed index are glued to the first place in search?

[RedBar]

I wonder if this will continue through the night?

It did and has continued to do so today.

June core update '25 has finished.

Is it? I don't usually follow these updates until afterwards and examine what has happened.

I've checked a few of my widget-specific phrases and I seem to have benefitted, whether these will remain consistent remains to be seen. My emd dot asia site is performing better than I expected. It's early days for it however it appears to be doing as I hoped even though it's completely in English which, thankfully, has been my global trade's default language since the 1950s.

[christianz]

Its hard to gage what quality metric they are using on this one, brand mentions maybe? Its certainly not CWV/UX/Accessibility/Usability or a good backlink profile, very odd!

What do you mean by "brand mentions"? If your website name is your brand then it looks like it doesn't matter how many times it is mentioned, backlinked or how much users do branded searches, direct visits etc. Certainly not an update that benefits sites that are loved and used by users.

If by brand you mean product brand, maybe those benefited. Google already was ranking e-com sites way too highly and for way too many terms. This update likely made it even worse. They like to attribute commercial intent to non-commercial, purely informational/infotainment queries.

[saladtosser]

@christianz I mean community mentions on social media/forums where the users talk positively about a brand, lets say a site called "Widget Thunder" but don't drop a link. Some SEOs offer this service, not saying it works but at the local level at least I don't see any onsite quality metrics that makes sense of this update and that's all I have other than a conspiracy, see below.

@haramamba I made one of my test sites purposely bad a few months back, dropped all on page keyword mentions to 1 and crashed the lighthouse from 99, 100, 100, 100 to 35, 48, 70, 73 and that site picked up 12 spots with this update without moving for years before. A few of us on Reddit have been speculating G is purposely ranking slower/poor UX sites higher to condition the user with a bad off google experience to help the AIO uptake. Since google employee said herself "sending users to sites is a necessary evil" maybe sending them users to bad UX sites brings them back to G faster than good UX sites!

[Fluff_Nutz]

And another ''smack in the chops'' by Bing. Google was actually doing really well for most of today. Fitting into 4th place in my source list. But, eventually, they fell and Bing took over with a good ''right hook''. It's fascinating watching the 2 biggest, so-called search engines, compete in my list for that 4th spot. Sadly, I doubt they will ever reach any of those podium medal positions.

Article rankings did increase according to GSC. Dropping slightly during the ''update''. However, still above the normal average.

Also, bit of a rant here. However, I really find it annoying and irritating how these companies force us, sort of demanding us. Looking at you Perplexity *cough*. Stating that ''we will get our content scraped, like it or not''. Kind of vibe. Well I say if you want our articles so darn badly, stop treating us like sheep and give us something in return. Preferably traffic. Because I can assure you, many, including myself, will block all scrapers if given a chance. You don't and will never own us! So your so-called ''threats'' and ''demands'' are really quite tiresome.

[Whitey]

Is it? I don't usually follow these updates until afterwards and examine what has happened.

@redbar from what I’m reading and experiencing there is still some remaining volatility, likely the tail end of changes while things settle down.

I’m keen to see some expert analysis on what factors were targeted and what thresholds were lifted to allow traffic to be increased.

My uneducated “feel” is that some of the aggressiveness by G’s algo in the multiple core updates of 2024 that heavily impacted some sites were softened. But my uneducated “guess” is that a lot more work from G is required to enable good content to surface and reward users.

So with more frequent core updates anticipated, I wonder what the future holds for us on G? (What’s new).

[Conro]

I think Google has tried to bring out small sites again, Even if some sites have had an improvement, they are still very far from the traffic of 2 years ago. I'm talking about well-made sites, active for many years and with well-made content. However, I have also noticed well-made sites that are now for the first time having a collapse in traffic due to the collapse of keywords. As usual it seems to be at the casino where you have to hope to be kissed by luck. I would prefer to be ranked well because I wrote a good article for my users and not because of other factors that consider algorithms today in one way and tomorrow in another . "Content is king" was all I needed as a guide on Google ranking... Once

[Miltos]

We’re running a Greek news site, and for the past 1.5 years we’ve been following Google’s guidelines to the letter. We invested heavily in creating people-first, helpful content — no shortcuts, no tricks, no AI spam. We improved site quality, rebuilt our editorial workflows, optimized our Core Web Vitals, implemented structured data properly, and maintained a clean, fast-loading site with fresh content published around the clock.

During this time, we survived seven (!) core updates — completely untouched. Each time, we either held steady or saw improvements. We took this as confirmation that we were on the right path.

But with the June 2025 core update, all of that vanished overnight.

Our Google Discover traffic is down 90%. Our Google News visibility has collapsed. Overall traffic is down 40% within two weeks. There is no warning in Search Console, no manual action, nothing obvious wrong on our side. We haven’t changed anything — in fact, we’ve doubled down on quality content and compliance.

This is devastating for our team and our business. We’ve spent months (years, even) doing everything the right way. And now we’re just… gone.

Is anyone else seeing a similar situation? Could something have changed in the way Google evaluates news publishers post-update? What could we be missing?

Any insight is deeply appreciated.

[Ali_Haider]

Yeah, it really feels that way sometimes. The update seems to be favoring outdated sites again—minimal content, clunky design, tiny images… and yet they're climbing. Frustrating when quality gets overlooked like that.

[Martin Ice Web]

We invested heavily in creating people-first, helpful content — no shortcuts, no tricks, no AI spam. We improved site quality, rebuilt our editorial workflows, optimized our Core Web Vitals, implemented structured data properly, and maintained a clean, fast-loading site with fresh content published around the clock.

And this seems to be the main problem. If you are trying to get better and have a nearly perfect website, wouldn´t it be look like AI generated?
What i learned over the last updates is, that the more a website yields to be perfect the more it is in focus of the core update.
AI generated websites means perfect CWV, many high resolution pictures, clean HTML, focused content ....

Our niche just represents the opposite of perfect websites, UE, UX.

[Micha]

@Miltos Even though my news site has lost rankings, Discover traffic has gone up. So I know the problem all too well. Right now, I’m seeing an Italian website ranking extremely well, even though it uses poorly translated AI-generated articles in German.

Honestly, it does not matter whether you follow everything Google recommends or not. The way Google evaluates websites seems completely irrational to me. I understand why our “mainstream media” consistently rank well for almost anything, but there are so many low-quality results in top positions that it really defies all logic.

As frustrating as it is (and believe me, I know how it feels, my business nearly collapsed once because of Google), the only real option apart from praying is to seriously consider ignoring most of Google’s advice and focusing more on your readers instead.

[RubicCubed]

We invested heavily in creating people-first, helpful content

The problem is all these search engine companies, if you want to call them that, are creating agents that do the browsing for people. In a year or two, maybe 1/2 or more of our visitors will just be these AI agents that will make monetizing with ads worthless. Same can be said for advertising with ads, because they will become much more expensive with fewer people seeing them.

Our Google Discover traffic is down 90%.

Google's AI generated summaries for discover, which I think is just in the USA now, will make it even worse when Google expands it across the globe.

I think internally Google sees their ad-driven business model failing, and they are trying to retain as many users as they can to offset their decline. Of course Google is taking us down with their sinking ship because nothing has emerged yet that compels people to leave Google quickly. It just feels like the entire web is experiencing a slow death to me.

[christianz]

We invested heavily in creating people-first, helpful content — no shortcuts, no tricks, no AI spam.

The "people-first" and "helpful content" thing is so 2024. Google no longer uses that language. Since late last year none of their updates have benefitted people-first websites.

[Conro]

I only miss +3000% and I will finally have the traffic of 2 years ago again :"D

[christianz]

I only miss +3000% and I will finally have the traffic of 2 years ago again :"D

Even if your rankings were returned exactly like 2 years ago, the AIOs and other UI crap would take away some good 30-40% of your traffic.

[Conro]

@christianz true

[haramamba]

Just found a website with PageSpeed 13.9s speed index, 33/79/57/100 score, 20 red warnings on the first place in serps.
Where is my website? On the second page. But I have 100/100/100/100 score, 0 warnings, 0.3s speed index. And I do not cheat with keyword stuffing in <h2>.

[BigKat]

Even if your rankings were returned exactly like 2 years ago, the AIOs and other UI crap would take away some good 30-40% of your traffic.

That's way too generous. From my experience, AIO results in a 95%+ decline in organic traffic even when cited.

[Treud]

today's traffic is butchered ! don't know if it's an analytics bug or real drop...

[Fluff_Nutz]

Yeah, traffic drop over here too. Didn't last long, did it.. Would love to think its an analytics bug but I'm more inclined to think its an actual drop. Considering how things usually go these days.

[Conro]

They have published more aio, and the increasing keywords today seem to have stabilized, this is for the few sites I follow. A small increase that will now collapse again. It seems to be on top of a roller coaster, now after the climb (so to speak), there is the descent