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]

[OldFaces]

I agree with Fluff above. If G continues to rebuild the internet in their image - pushing AI, de-indexing much of the internet, and zero-click search queries - and now with AI browsers such as Perplexity's comet having built in banner advertisement blocking, the Internet Golden Age (where everyone had a 'voice' by publishing websites) is over. I've witnessed a ton of small content publishers like myself who has been doing this for 25 years, simply stop updating their website and change careers and hobbies. This is very sad.

[tangor]

the Internet Golden Age (where everyone had a 'voice' by publishing websites) is over.

This has been true for over a decade. Sad thing is the newbie webmasters are chasing the myth of money and the first generation of webmasters is only now waking up to the fact that myth was never real in the first place.

For all the interest in AI by nation/states the reality is g and other major search engines are actively killing off the small sites (which are generally repetitive/duplicative chasing the same goals in interest of larger/brand sites that pay to play (while getting ripped by AI at the same time). Part of this is to clear out the "noise" of too many sites, expense of "indexing each", and paying penny accounts for a billion when a few thousand REAL DOLLAR accounts are out there.

This is nothing more than a consolidation of a communications niche. Much like what happened after Gutenberg-to-Present---where only a SURVIVING number of publishers (who gobbled up competitors) are 99% and all the rest is fighting for nickles.

THAT SAID, if one is the BEST in the nickles market one can still make a good living by being BEST of the nickles crowd. In another perspective, that "nickle" market is still multi-millions in size because the OTHER 99% is so incredibly large.

ON THE OTHER HAND, g is known to screw things up from time to time. This last update seems to fall into that category and remains unsettled. If it continues the repercussions will resonate to corporate (eventually) that results in a "Fix it Now! The Plebs are in Revolt!"

As an OBSERVATION of g... this rollout did not go well, the collateral damage was unintended and some scrambling is going on behind the scenes. Some will "recover" sooner, others "later", but there will be a change.

Just wonder if corporate's reliance on AI is SLOWING things down because all the scrapped data has not yet been disseminated?

Food for thought.

[christianz]

This is nothing more than a consolidation of a communications niche. Much like what happened after Gutenberg-to-Present---where only a SURVIVING number of publishers (who gobbled up competitors) are 99% and all the rest is fighting for nickles.

THAT SAID, if one is the BEST in the nickles market one can still make a good living by being BEST of the nickles crowd. In another perspective, that "nickle" market is still multi-millions in size because the OTHER 99% is so incredibly large.

Consolidation you describe was HCU. This update and several before it are the opposite of that. July update gave some rankings to small spam/SEO sites (while still reducing total amount of traffic to the web, of course). I have no idea why Google decided it was good idea to weaken spam filtering and undo all progress they made in first half of 2024.

I also don't fully agree with your claim that being best in a small niche can still yield good results. Google SERPs are so irrelevant to keywords that usually its some generic large site or ecom site that will get preference anyway, despite not being relevant and despite being worse in every way.

[haramamba]

I do not see G-bot requests for the last 19 hours on my server.
It feels like the update or bug fixing continues.

[nordland]

A new month is almost over, and I can see record numbers for my website, record highs in search queries and in the number of indexed pages, which makes me feel positive about the future. I also have a record in direct traffic, which I consider one of the most important metrics. I’ve become more active on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram; even though these platforms don’t drive much direct traffic, they help spread my brand and I’m getting quite a lot of views there. Pinterest also drives some traffic to the site, but nowhere near as much as Google does. I’ve also hit a record in AdSense revenue, which is especially exciting.

[christianz]

For me July will be the worst month in 5 years in terms of ad revenue, down incredible 65% YoY!

[Fluff_Nutz]

@nordland

I hate to break it to you, but Direct Traffic is also bot traffic. Therefore not really reliable. With that said I doubt any traffic source is reliable.

Its all one big risk. A literal online lottery. Two of my biggest traffic sources crashed out this month. Thankfully I'm still +4% over last month in traffic but its incredibly difficult to find sustainable growth.

[haramamba]

For those who like cloudflare.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT Agent casually clicks through “I am not a robot” verification test
[arstechnica.com ]

[Conro]

Google confirms that it will sign the code of conduct for the AI Act in Europe which will take effect in a few days. This means that it will have to provide a way to prevent its bots from using copyrighted content without the author's permission, for example. You will have to provide an opt-out and comply with it. I hope everyone uses the opt out, I have never been against artificial intelligence, but they really exaggerated this time.
[techcrunch.com...]

[tangor]

Consolidation you describe was HCU.

Consolidation continues all the time. Think Highlander (There can be only one.) or Big Fish and Bigger Fish, etc. There's also Diminishing Returns wherein paying out on increasingly smaller "accounts" will be worse than minting a penny. (Currently costs 4¢ to mint the US penny. Currently on chopping block.)

THIS WILL HAPPEN. Not today, maybe not for a few years yet, but it will come. Plan for that. Diversify now or whine later.

[saladtosser]

Seeing *huge* SERP position shifts today, anyone else? Looks like sites hit by June core update being hit harder!

[ichthyous]

Definitely a reversion of the recent higher traffic, with a big drop in UK traffic again. This isn't following the June pattern for me, it's following the pattern of dismal traffic from June 24th through the entire month of July, except for the last week or so. In the last week, traffic skyrocketed and it resulted in the first decent inquiries for the entire month of July...one after the next, all within 48 hours. So that's where my business is at with Google...you get very brief bursts of much higher traffic where you can hope to get some visibility and new customers, then it just drops back to the old pattern.

Also, I noticed that Google keeps dropping large batches of counted backlinks...thousands so far. The sites and the links are all still up and active, but Google isn't counting them anymore.

[Micha]

@ichthyous Could this perhaps be due to the fact that Google's AI search was launched in the UK a few days ago?


After a few really bad days, things are running reasonably well again for me, and Google traffic has picked up somewhat (let’s see how long that lasts). Certain areas of my news site are seeing significantly less traffic, I suspect that’s due to the AI responses. However, news traffic is surprisingly good at the moment. The shop is a strange mix: nothing one day, extremely busy the next, and so on. It’s enough to survive, but not to live on, as they say.

[System]

New month, New thread at: google/5123981.htm [webmasterworld.com]

[edited by: not2easy at 4:17 pm (utc) on Aug 4, 2025]
[edit reason] new month [/edit]