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]

[Whitey]

ChatGPT:

Why the June 2025 Core Update Volatility Is Still Ongoing (and for How Long)

TL;DNR:

Although Google declared the June 2025 Core Update finished on July 17, ranking volatility continues and may persist for another 1–3 weeks.

Here’s why:

•Google’s systems adjust in phases — helpful content, E-E-A-T, AI/RankEmbed, and spam filters all settle at different times.

•Re-crawling and re-indexing delays mean sites aren’t re-evaluated all at once — especially lower crawl-budget domains.

•User behavior signals (clicks, bounce, dwell time) feed back into ranking tweaks post-rollout (e.g., via NavBoost).

•Tools like Semrush and Mozcast are still showing elevated turbulence.

•Historically, updates take 2–3 weeks to settle after rollout ends (e.g. March 2024, Sept 2022, June 2021 updates).

Sources: SEO tool dashboards + analysts like Glenn Gabe, Barry Schwartz, Marie Haynes

[JeepersCreepers1]

Traffic lost almost 50%. Without any big changes for long time and SEO score based almost 100.

Some older websites with many internal links and not clear UX moved up in SERP. That's fact.

Maybe it's chance for small bad website and slap face for websites with strong branded keywords.

Or maybe something gone wrong with that update.

Finding an answer is not easy now. Maybe for 1 - 2 month, yes.

Time will tell.

[EditorialGuy]

@EditorialGuy - i think the devil will be in the detail, rather than an "overall" picture that averages out the lift. There will be winners and losers among the 4000+ bloggers.

Of course. That's always the case, but it doesn't mean data points should be ignored.

[RedBar]

@MIW ... Yep, traffic way down today plus, when using Statcounter, so far 34% from Huawei, Singapore, I'll wait for my server logs later to view the real metrics.

[mosxu]

Search is dead!

Seriously in two years time you will have Gemini with a max 20% market share!

It is all over folks!

[nordland]

Search will never die. People just search on different platforms and in different formats.

[Micha]

@mosxus It's not the search engine, but the websites and AI that learn from themselves and become even more stupid as a result.

Just a question: Since Google hasn't said anything about what's going on, could it mean that something went wrong with the core update and they're now trying to fix it? Sure, there are always fluctuations after a core update, but they're not usually as severe as they are at the moment.

[christianz]

Search will never die. People just search on different platforms and in different formats.

The AI Overview/ChatGPT type of serching is non-viable model. Because there is no value passed to the sources of information - websites. They need to figure out a way how to pay publishers for:

1) The scraping of content for training
2) Agents visiting websites and fetching info real time

I am witnessing both and in large volume. Which is why I completely blocked ChatGPT for both scenarios, subject to change once Sam Altman agrees to send me some money.

[ichthyous]

I also saw traffic trending down the entire week, and yesterday it was much lower. Search was -19%, USA and UK both down 19-20%. UK traffic was much lower all week and traffic to my home page is at -50% for some reason. Today it looks like a more normal traffic pattern is kicking in.

@christianZ and the others out there blocking AI bots completely. All I can say is that I totally understand the motivation, but the final outcome is far from being determined. We are still very early in the AI race and there will be a lot more competition. I am seeing more and more traffic from AI platforms...is it actionable? Not yet I think. I do think that we really don't have a choice but to stay in the game and have our names and our sites mentioned in the AIO results, or in ChatGPT or wherever we can. More and more people are shifting to this kind of search and they aren't thinking twice about abandoning the old Google search.

This mostly impacts informational sites that make a living from running ads, the rest of us who are not dependent on informational content as much are not being affected as badly. My article traffic is way down, but to be honest the people who came to my site to read the articles really never resulted in any sales (I don't run ads so those pages were never monetized). I added that content simply for the edification of visitors, to add more authority to the site, and to see if I could siphon some of them off and convert them to paying customers (answer: not really).

The articles are still top destinations to the site despite losing almost half the visits. The real problem is that my actual category pages on my site, where the 'products' reside have steadily lost traffic as AIO have been added, and even before as more widgets were continually added.

The bottom line with AI though, is that if the AI platforms end up driving all the legitimate / unique content creation out of the market and into bankruptcy, who will provide these datasets with fresh content? I'm not stating anything new here...but it appears that many sites are being driven under faster than anyone expected. What will be left is AI content feeding on AI content.

One concrete example...last year I made a bid for a website that was going under. The site had a treasure trove of unique articles written by actual writers in the field. While speaking with the current owners they brought up over and over how the new owner could jettison all of the expensive writers and just use AI to write the articles themselves, thereby cutting one of the main expenses. Of course, he would have told me anything to sell the site at that point, but I thought it was telling. They had moved on to another site and the owners use AI to write everything themselves now.

[ichthyous]

Some observations from GSC:

I ran a report comparing traffic from the last 28 days to the same period last year. I am seeing much higher impressions but the CTR is half or less for many high traffic searches. Some have drops in the CTR of two thirds.

Meanwhile, there is an increase in CTR for some searches, but mostly more obscure ones or mismatches with my site content. Overall my traffic is higher, but the CTR is abysmal compared to last year. New inquiries slowed dramatically starting in April and are at tiny trickle now...commensurate with past periods of recession, like 2008/2009 or 2020. I don't think the drop is all Google, AIO, etc...but the combined impact is huge. I'm planning for a very poor 2025 in general, thankfully helped by an extremely strong start to the year from Jan - March.

[Micha]

Today was the first day with normal traffic, the Discover traffic from the news site is back, and the shop even had quite good sales from Google buyers today.
I hope it doesn't drop again tomorrow.

[christianz]

@ichthyous Your site(s) are primarily e-com. For you blocking ChatGPT would not make sense.

My site is 100% information and it is always changing and updating. For me it is opposite - allowing ChatGPT to act as some kind of middleman between audience and my site (that takes my ad revenue) makes no sense.

[christianz]

When Google stops abusing its monopoly status and allows webmasters to disable AIOs for their sites (right now it is tied to featured snippets), I will block AIOs too - not being featured in any AIOs will increase my traffic.

Why? Because when I get featured in AIO the answer is actually correct and good, there is no need to go to my site (nobody clicks on the citations anyway). When I am not featured in AIO, information may be incorrect and taken from low integrity source and users who suspect it is incorrect will look at the actual web results and maybe find my site there.

This is why Google prevented webmasters from having any way to opt out of AIOs. Because opting out is good for webmasters and bad for Google's plans (of having all traffic and ad revenue to themselves).

[Whitey]

Our core update gains are reversing in the last 24hrs. Down around 50%.

[EditorialGuy]

@Whitey: Our Google pageviews were down 31% on Saturday, while other sources of traffic were mostly up. On the whole, we gained nicely from the update--or would have if the Google Trampoline Effect hadn't returned

[Micha]

When Google stops abusing its monopoly status and allows webmasters to disable AIOs for their sites (right now it is tied to featured snippets), I will block AIOs too - not being featured in any AIOs will increase my traffic.

I’m afraid they won’t. The U.S. government’s AI policy is basically a free pass. The FTC is being severely limited and will no longer be able to act. I’m also afraid that this means the antitrust cases are off the table.

[RedBar]

(nobody clicks on the citations anyway)

Known fact or personal assumption?

If I do not recognise the citation source I usually do check it out especially to see if there is anything else of relevance.

[Dooku]

Known fact or personal assumption?

Unfortunately I do not have the website at hand where I read the research, but from memory the CTR from AIO boxes to any website were around 0,2%
So basically useless. Although it was predicted it might go up as more and more search queries produce AIO boxes.
However, seeing as how high the AIO box percentage already is at [advancedwebranking.com...]
How much higher will the CTR still get in the future......I guess negligible.

[Dooku]

This is a really good short documentary that explains why we are in the current situation.
This is REALLY A MUST WATCH documentary. A quote in this video "there are people working at google I would not piss on even if they were on fire!"

Yes, I know some people here still believe in the "goodness" of google, but simply are not aware that everything is by design and scheduled to be "changed" later so that niche, sector, product or whatever, will also ONLY benefit to the profit of google:

Just ignore the Dutch language comments at the beginning....the actual content is in english language:
[youtube.com...]

[Conro]

@Dooku Big companies are like that. I's how that guy who immediately turns his back for his interests. That he is your friend as long as he can get something in return and abandons you as soon as he no longer needs you. Google is exactly that guy, he has shown it several times, but there are those who continue not to want to see the reality of the facts

[RedBar]

This is a really good short documentary that explains why we are in the current situation.

Excellent

[ichthyous]

Whatever was happening earlier this week is definitely over and traffic has reverted. My home page traffic was -25 to -50% until Friday, and since yesterday back to normal. Today traffic is unusually high...

[mosxu]

"en#*$!tification” is probably not enough to describe the #*$!ification that most of us took over the years! The tricks, the personalisation and so on is just peanuts!

[Conro]

On August 2, the AI Act will come into force in Europe and publishers must be able to block bots (Opt-out) that use content from sites to train and create AI content. Does anyone know how Google is moving? At the moment, the ai and indexing bot seems to still be the same and can continue to use the content of the sites for ai overview summaries

[Micha]

@Conro I'd be interested in that too. So far, Google hasn't said anything about it. I wouldn't be surprised if they just try to sit it out for now

[saladtosser]

@Conro how does that affect these AI companies that have already scraped the full internet? Will they need to purge their systems or will this be a, "well whats done is done, moving forward" type approach? In which case 2 little 2 late comes to mind!

[Conro]

@Micha Maybe we will find out this weekend. It is not even known what position Google have taken regarding The code of conduct

@saladtosser As far as I understood then maybe I'm wrong, the "now it's done is done" should only apply to models already produced. For the new models everything is much more complex and obviously in the new models there will also be everything that has been used in the old models or in part. With the ai act, if I have not misunderstood, you must be able to access a public register to know what content has been used and where they were extracted from (e.g. website page) , so that you can request removal If you don't want your information to be used again without authorization. I guess every time you remove info each model created again? For AI companies it would be unsustainable, but even for us it is unsustainable to give away free our work that we have sweated for, so I don't give a damn

[Whitey]

The tools confirm continuing post core update volatility over the weekend:

[seroundtable.com...]

[Dooku]

We regularly see all these research results on well known websites about zero-click, AI boxes, AI mode, CTR from AI......etc....etc...
Why are we not seeing any research results on the number of companies going bust explicitly because of ensh|tification of search results and AI use by google?
One of my websites is service based and many of my customers are in the creative sector.
I have seen quite a lot of their websites go dark and domains not working any more(or already snatched up by brokers).

So, if I am just ONE person that is seeing this, what is the actual scale this is happening now?

[Fluff_Nutz]

The amount of websites getting killed off right now is likely quite high. In, just my sector, I have seen 2 sites go completely dead. One of which closed their site. The other just stopped posting altogether and hasn't been active for several years now.

Other sites I follow are big. Huge in fact but are being hit by tariffs and revenue issues to the point that they did not visit their usual exhibits this past month. I found it incredibly disappointing as they usually do attend those. First time in over a decade. Definitely a wake up sign.

A lot of sites are feeling the pressure. In all niche sectors. Regardless if they sell products or do something else entirely. No one is enjoying any of this, except those who own LLMs and other corporates who are making huge profits right now. Stealing content without a care in the world.

I often feel like just joining them in creating AI content. Why put so much effort into something when it just gets stolen and you end up getting nothing for it. Seems a waste. Alas, I spent a good part of yesterday creating new articles. Up to 30,000+ words worth. Written from my own hand and experience. Why do I do this to myself?