August 2025 Google Search Observations

[mosxu]

AI Mode doesn’t seem to cut it either the business model is cooked:

No clicks no money!

[zimka]

I've completely lost motivation for SEO and don’t know what to do next. My polished and dedicated content has hit rock bottom, and I'm not seeing any positive signals from Google.

[Dooku]

My polished and dedicated content has hit rock bottom

If you are doing content than it's pretty much over. If you are doing e-commerce or services......it will happen a bit later.

Just watched the youtube video from Barry Schwartz "The trush about G search traffic......."
G is walking a very fine line, they tried all kinds of different side businesses/products.....those went all bust.
So they are now all out on advertising in their SE and milking it to the max......they don't have anything else.

Once companies think and feel that their advertising ROI is bad because they see more and more people leaving G.....then it's over REALLY QUICK for G.
We just need to wait for that tipping point, that's all.

[RedBar]

Question: An observation from recent bot and spam activity on my sites.

Is Paris, France, becoming one of the major global activity centres?

I've always had loads of garbage from there however the past couple of months has seen a massive increase of 500+%

[gatormark]

Bot traffic is currently the norm. I had been getting about a 400% increase in traffic because of bots from Singapore. I blocked all of the IP addresses in Singapore and it did not impact Singapore bot traffic at all. However, it looks like Google has filtered out that traffic and it is not showing up in my analytics, finally.

[Bill_H]

We have gone from volatile, to simply crashing with the July update. Traffic off 25-40%, dropping further every day. No stale content, lots of fresh or refreshed content. Core vitals are green all the way, search console green all the way. Been doing this for more than a decade, never seen anything like it.

Oddly, seeing GA4 listing some js and images as pages. Checked the source code, it is clean. No idea what G is doing.

[Fluff_Nutz]

@Dooku

Leave Google and go where exactly? Its not like there is any good alternative right now. Every search seems to have the same motive and agenda. Content scrape and refuse to give traffic. We need a search with publishers in mind. Alas, there is none.

I think this is why a lot of sites haven't already left Google. Just like with Youtube, there is no alternative platform to go to. They also have the highest marketshare right now too. Still.. Which means that searchers still prefer their platform. Its rough but there is no where to go to and no alternative.

But AI search is a stupid invention. Once a proper LLM blocker is released people will use it and then what happens? LLMs can no longer scrape every site out there. There are blocks for Youtube ads, site ads and, mark my words, there will be one for LLMs too. Its too early for a proper release but its likely in the works. So if sites don't see traffic soon there will be blocks until something, more, agreeable, is made. At present there is no blocking them, so companies are taking full advantage of this right now. But we are still the search fuel.

They still need us otherwise we wouldn't be getting scrapped. Meaning they should have more respect for the ''internet fuel''. It literally feels like children own these companies now. I have low regard for America in general. Terrible laws, authorities and kids with toys in high positions.

@gatormark
Yup, I had a huge increase of traffic from German bots, starting last month. I managed to block them but they still try. They refuse to give up but I, also, refuse to unblock. So their attempts are futile.

Also, why are Google removing referral links? You expect me to just rely on you alone? Not going to happen!

[Dooku]

@Redbar, most of that traffic is routed through OVHCloud from Paris France. In the server log files or in Cloudflare it's either listed as OVHCloud directly or from seo bots, ai bots and all types of hacking crap from hosting companies whose IP addresses are from OVHCloud even though they are listed with different host names.
OVHCloud is just one big cesspool of shady traffic......I have them blocked on all ASN network numbers in Cloudflare.

[RedBar]

@Dooku ... Yep, my conclusion too ... Just what do they derive from doing this?

[Gotcha]

My solution for now to survive is Bing. I got 80k sessions and page views from me while Google hates my tech site.

[Treud]

I hear here and there that the solution is Bing. For me it’s the same, there is no strategy for this or this search engine.
I just prioritize the UX now. I put some Q&A because some engine like them and tbh, it also serve my customers. !

I don’t need traffic as an e-commerce for the sake of seeing numbers, I need engaging visits.

For one of the website (that will be the e-commerce of a wholesale), strategy is to print hard copy of catalog ans mail to the professionals !

The 100% full digital is long gone, we need to back to real shops and target directly our customers ! Plus I can’t and don’t want to fight against huge companies like Amazon.

[Fluff_Nutz]

I suppose, for me, Google is still my highest ranking search engine. With a +244% traffic increase over last month. I was one of those that saw benefits from the last ''update''. Alas, as they murdered my other top performing search sources. Including referral links. I still have the same amount of traffic I had 5 months ago.

Despite myself and my team's best efforts to stay consistent we haven't seen any growth for 5 months now. It's just 'stable'. Like the traffic tap has been turned and switched off. We used to live on trending articles but none of that seems to matter now.

I'm also reading elsewhere that trending articles no longer bring in much traffic any more. So clearly I'm not alone in this situation

[Markedd]

I don't know what you guys are seeing, but I recently returned to check on the stats of an old tech blog that I pretty much abandoned. Weirdly enough, I am back at the top of the SERPS... And I mean I am currently outperforming pretty much all of my competitors for almost all the articles. I am almost always in the top three, even above youtube links and anything similar. But now riddle me this. Why hasn't the traffic increase that much. Before 2024, it was about 200k searches a month. Now it's barely 1.5K. And while it made sense before after the articles were thrown out of the first page completely, now they're back. And I only see a 0.2-0.3K increase in traffic per month. Yeah, I'll continue to grow my other (offline) businesses..

[Markedd]

@Fluff_Nutz No, you are not.

[christianz]

@Markedd What method did you use for checking your rankings? If it was just by googling from a computer that has any connection with you (your cookies) your site will show up much higher and more often.

[Micha]

Today is another day of death... Visitor numbers are down everywhere. I'm starting to wonder if it's even possible to make any money with an online shop via Google...

@christanz You could try Proton VPN, for example. It's free and sufficient for checking your ranking.

[Markedd]

@christianz No, the rankings are pretty much the same whether I search using my own credentials or using a VPN.

[Markedd]

Oh, I figured it out. Google suppressed the Discover traffic to 0, so it balances the traffic out, keeping the same amount of people. My advice remains as it was years ago to anyone still in this business. GET OUT NOW!

[nordland]

Here it's going up as usual, record levels every week, record levels even on Adsense, but rpm has gone down a bit in the last week.

[RedBar]

GET OUT NOW!

Ok, I've done my fair share of whingeing however it will all depend on one's point of view and necessity for a site.

Me, 57 years in business with 32 years Net involvement.

Mine are brochureware sites, specialist information for global bulk trade promotion. I have not created a glossy company brochure in 20 years. It has been and still is MY most cost-effective promotional medium. For sure general traffic is way down BUT real-world orders and new enquiries are still being generated.

Honestly, in the 90s I thought that trade fairs would die however , forgetting Covid, the last 10 years they have seen nothing but successful growth.

However if one is trying to promote one's own SEO business to potential national / international customers then I would definitely re-consider that as a great idea.

[Micha]

Great, for over a week now, the shop has had endless visitors via Google, but not a single one of them has made a purchase. The owner is now thinking about giving up... After 20 years, that's really tough.

And the news site is down again. Today is another good example of how the mass media is favored. It's one of those days when you finally wish there was a decent alternative to Google.

[Martin Ice Web]

@Micha,

today is very bad. Zero user engagement so far.
But this has become normal for a wednesday.

[fearlessrick]

Yesterday was the worst day of the month, by far. Just two days prior, my traffic was booming. Straight into the toilet since then. Today, stats are stuck right where they were at 5:30 am ET. It's now 9:47 am ET. No visits, no impressions, no page views for more than four hours? Who turned off the internet.

Honestly, I should not have let my hopes get too high. Google, like the government, Fs up everything it touches. Really fed up with the manner in which the oligarchs rule the world. There must be a better way. It should all just be nuked from outer space. Giant meteor, anybody?

[gatormark]

One of my pages, which is ranked #1 in Google's search results, has received 50% fewer clicks over the past 90 days...and decreasing. This is crazy!

[gatormark]

“...some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.” - Alfred Pennyworth

[saladtosser]

Wow, now i'm seeing non https sites taking the number one spots. So I was looking at unrelated search terms to mine today trying to figure out whats ranking at the top as of today in niches nothing to do with me and its still the non technical sites taking precedence (backlink profiles are all bad or non existent) The sites at the top (1/2 spot) only mention the search term in the title and description, its literally not on the page once (I went through source code).

As I go further down the results the sites below mention the term more frequent as you go along and the UX and backlink profiles also get better. Just my observations, test for yourselves in unrelated searches! Relevance, UX and backlinks have been dialed down to minus points since the July update I swear! They must have forgot to apply some filters with this update? And its not "Brand" winning, none of these sites have a brand (think service + area).

Is it possible older untouched content is getting a boost because if it hasn't been touched for years (going on the results/design/UX they haven't been refreshed in donkeys) to counter AI slop?

[Martin Ice Web]

They must have forgot to apply some filters with this update?

I see it in another way.
With AI Overview they lost a lot of additional clicks on adds.
To keep the same amount of add clicks you have to search for new sources or push users to click on adds.
And don´t forget that amazon pulled out of PSA. And that the economy is not runing very well.


Ways to do so:
-poeple also ask/search box
-make serps as worse as users a willing to live with, without moving to another SE

I like to compare it with superstores.
The big ones research the purchasing behavior of their customers. Like what they are buying most and frequent. What way did they take a.s.o.
They will place the best selling items way off the entrance/checkout as they want you to go through the whole store and buy things you didn´t want to buy at first.
Some stores will route you through the whole store with no shortcut to the checkout.

Same with search. Put the best performing websites down and poeple will tend to click on adds even they didn´t want to.

If you realy think google is interested in giving users the possible best and fastest answer/serps, especially when it comes to transactional queries, then i have to disappoint you. I am sorry.

[ichthyous]

Scanning some of the posts above regarding traffic suddenly vanishing, top ranking pages not pulling in half the traffic they used to, etc...is any of this something new? It seems that Google is endlessly cooking up ways to siphon off traffic and demote the organic results. My "ranking" has been stable all year, and has been improving...but my USA traffic is slowly deflating for weeks now.

I just noticed that AIO is now active even for the most specific searches. For example, I just searched for the unique catalog ID# of one of the items I sell on my site. What came up was an AI snippit of text scraped from my page, with a link to the item on the right. So in other words, Google is now returning AI overviews for even single product pages.

While it is still obvious which link to click to get to the page, why does google need to intervene at all? It's simply a ploy to try and stop users from visiting that website in the first place, and it's going to result in a big loss in traffic. What happens when Google decides to shrink down the image, or just drop the image entirely from the AIO? Nobody will click through at all.

On top of that, any search that might be interpreted as informational in nature only returns an endless number of how to articles and videos...as if they are absolutely certain that nobody in the world might be interested in anything but the same dumb cookie cutter articles. One would think that a trillion dollar company could use its own AI to predict that certain searches are more nuanced and people might be searching for different things, some info articles and others e-comm sites. But Google apparently doesn't have that capacity yet.

[Martin Ice Web]

@ichthyous,

i, too, saw the first time today that AI is online for items especially if you search for brand + item number.
But beware of believing all that AI is showing. AI is just scrapped info from websites. If items have changed AI will not catch that up very fast.
I think websites that get daily updates are much better information sources then AI.


Today traffic is back but it is all window lurckers.

[Micha]

Fun is when you laugh anyway, but this is really sad. Shop: There is traffic, but no sales. I'm slowly losing hope that anything will happen.
News page: Sharp decline, the page no longer ranks even for my main keywords. But my niche is currently full of news that all the major media outlets are reporting on (agency reports). And fake news from Bild. As a small magazine, we don't stand a chance against that, of course.

[Fluff_Nutz]

Another problem too is the amount of changes that both the Search and Youtube are currently going through. There has been so many over the, short, few years that we are, simply, not allowed to grow. We are not even given the chance to. I mean over the past few years both platforms have been seriously beat to death...

SEARCH
1) Mass de-indexing (De-indexing is still on-going. Hence the random traffic drops. Articles are de-indexed to, then, be placed in to the company AI. All search models are doing this right now. Including both Google and Bing. Yet we are not giving any credit for this. We are not paid or given any traffic)
2) SERP-de-shuffle. The search has been moved around. Articles that were on page 1 are no longer seen. Instead, garbage has been placed one page 1. Along with a ton of unnecessary Google ads and sponsors. This is, overall, making the G search a very toxic and confusing place to be in. Many are no longer finding answers to their search
3) AI Summaries. AIO has, now, been implemented. This replaces the, original, short snippets that we are used to seeing at the top of searches. Except that, instead of being a snippet, it copies the entire content from other articles. Literally all of it. Essentially becoming, itself, an article. It is NOT written or created by Google themselves. It is stolen. Stolen from sites that no longer see traffic or given any credit for this. Its also very inaccurate a lot of the time
4) AI Mode. This is also just as useless as the AIO. I have used it once and don't plan to go back to it. You do not get instant answers. You are, instead, led on a wild goose chase. Google want you to stay on that platform and lead you on a ''merry-go-round''. Forever asking the same question in all kinds of different ways and never getting an answer. Why? Because it will, soon, be filled with ads and a paywall.
5) Age ID Verification. Some users have seen this, some have yet to. But those that have seen it are, now, forced to show ID in order to access age related content. Is this really to protect users? Or another way to obtain personal information?

YOUTUBE
1) SERP-de-Shuffle. Youtube has also, recently, seen its fair share of ''serp-de-shuffle''. Where the platform, now, seems to prioritise Youtube Shorts over longform videos. Most of the videos at the top of each search. Just like with Google search. Often, now, looking like a spammy mess. Each new query only responds with top performing videos. Videos that are, already, generating thousands of views. Where is the help for smaller creators? They won't stop promoting big players because they generate more revenue for the platform. Searching for anything, also, just like G Search, sometimes doesn't even give you the videos you wanted. Also, stop fantasizing over Mr Beast!
2) AI. As with search itself Youtube has also been hit with AI. A lot of content is being used to train for AI. A lot of content is also being stolen. AI videos also floods the search
3) Age ID Verification. There is currently a Youtube boycotting going on right now. Don't think its really working. According to a post on Reddit the Youtube site is still getting millions of views per day. But its definitely a cause for concern, just like with search.
4) Increased Ads. Videos are, now, getting increased and longer ads in them. Often putting viewers off. Rightly so. Even the Youtube Premium, a service that was not meant to feature ads. Now has them. Where exactly are you getting your money's worth?

All of this has been happening over the past, albeit short, few years. Making it impossible to maintain any consistent traffic growth. I'm likely, also, missing a few other pointers too. But long story short, there is a lot going on right now. Too much, maybe? All, if not most of which, seems pointless in my eyes. But it does show that G are only in it for the money. Particularly with the state of the search and the use of the AI Mode. Also their ''love affair'' with bigger Youtubers and increased ads. As a content creator my revenue has not increased due to increased ads. In fact, if anything, Youtube are taking revenue off their creators. We do not see any benefits.

I have posted 3 videos on to Youtube these past few days. Forever questioning myself if I should or not. A lot of those who are, currently, boycotting are refusing to post videos at present. So I have thought about joining them. Perhaps I should as these recent videos of mine have not seen any traction at all. In fact some of them still have only a few single digit views. My channel was doing well until I began posting again, after a few days break. So I'll likely go back to continuing that break.

But all of those issues have impacted both platforms. Some of which are still on-going. All of which have a negative impact on traffic. We have never, if ever, had a good long respite. Its so tiring. This is, arguably, the worst time to be a content creator. Just let us grow and leave us alone! Why so many frustrating changes?

Also, as of yesterday, my revenue provider. Who is ''partnered'' with Google has initiated a petition against AI. Seeking to give credit for our work. Unfortunately, although I am sure they will reach the amount of signatures needed.

I thought, me trying to create a website slap bang on the release of AI was bad enough. Yes, my site is only a year or 2 old. Already regret my life choices...

[edited by: not2easy at 11:27 am (utc) on Aug 17, 2025]
[edit reason] Please see TOS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]