October 2025 Google Search Observations

[saladtosser]

@gatormark Been seeing this for weeks bud! Its a shame the AI crap isn't restricted to that tab but its flooding every other tab as well

[Kendo]

Yet almost all players still queue for real opponents in online lobby's.

While machine chess can be beaten, humans can make bad judgement calls. It is more like "catch of the day".

Also, humans can have their attention averted while preparing a trap elsewhere.

[Kendo]

How much money you got?

because-it-WILL-take-MONEY... and hard work, organization, venture capital, a business plan, market opportunity, a public void to fill, national defense, and just plain capitalism

A free anti-virus software that detects and removes all offending apps and services will not cost that much.

A Microsoft Defender update would be quick.

[goodoldweb]

@goodoldweb, the more I think about this, the more I realize that it's not Google's fault. It's the natural evolution of the internet with AI at the center of the macroevolution. It's not just impacting web developers or website owners; AI is affecting scores of industries...more than some may realize. This is a paradigm shift, no different than the advent of the internet itself.

It’s Google.

A quick look at our store server logs leaves no doubt in my mind. They’ve positioned themselves strategically at all the main intersections of the web, Chrome, Search, Gmail, Android, and more — and now they control the faucet as they please.

Our webstore logs tell a very grim story. Organic clicks have completely vanished. What remains are paid clicks, expensive, low-quality, and non-converting. When we do make a few sales, the patterns are bizarre: spikes from specific states, sudden demand for products that haven’t sold in months, and overall strange click behavior while our pages show top positions when we search for our products (from other machines, other networks etc). Somehow the rest of the country don't see our listings?

The level of control this company has over online trade is staggering.
The world has essentially allowed a fat cat to guard the milk.

Yes, AI plays a role in all this, but most users, especially those over 47ish aren’t actively using or even interested in using AI yet. So where did all those real customers go? How come they don't see our listings?

Make no mistake — it’s Google adjusting everyones exposure as they see fit. We should not fool ourselves, this company is now clearly run by people with thierd world mentality.

Ever asked yourself, how many "core updates" do they really have to do every week now? :)

[Martin Ice Web]

@goodoldweb, the more I think about this, the more I realize that it's not Google's fault. It's the natural evolution of the internet with AI at the center of the macroevolution.

this doesn´t explain the sudden drops in traffic within seconds. Remember we all are seeing some days with good traffic followed by weeks of rubbish traffic. This is in googles hands.
They squeezing the very little rest out of free traffic. AI is not only a Zero traffic player but also dosn´t convert into money for the most AI companys (google included).

[saladtosser]

Using AI for answers is a bit like hiring a morbidly obese guy who's never worked out or dieted as your personal trainer.

Yes, he read all the books and curated the knowledge of others into some qualification on how to do it, ............ but has never done it himself! So has zero experience! Would you use that guy as your go to source for all things fitness? If not why not? And if the answer comes down to "lack of experience", ask yourself why the same logic is not applied when asking a LLM that curated the knowledge of others with no experience for everything else?!

This is what we need to get across to the masses, even if we have to use fat shaming analogies!

[gatormark]

this doesn´t explain the sudden drops in traffic within seconds. Remember we all are seeing some days with good traffic followed by weeks of rubbish traffic. This is in googles hands.

@Martin Ice Web @goodoleweb

I understand what you're saying, and yes, Google is manipulating traffic. However, that doesn't discredit my initial conclusions. Google sees the handwriting on the wall and is "reacting" to the new AI frontier and how "information" will be acquired moving forward. Google is REACTING. It's similar to what we will need to do to survive. We can keep the status quo and go the way of the dodo bird (or malls, laser disc players, and word processors), or try to catch the AI wave in the same way we long-timers caught the internet-website wave. I haven't had a real job in 12 years. Websites have paid my bills for 12 years. I have now resigned myself to the fact that the wave is over. Now, I am trying to determine what the best course of action is for a 60-year-old who retires in 2 years.

[BigKat]

Google sees the handwriting on the wall and is "reacting" to the new AI frontier and how "information" will be acquired moving forward. Google is REACTING.

I have to agree with this. Google's reactionary moves started with ChatGPT blindsiding them and now they are trying to catch up. Google's gravy train is coming to an end, and Google will have to do something they're not very good at - innovation. Google is losing their grip on search, and I see it in where our sales are coming from. Though these are challenging times for us, I hope when we emerge from the other side Google's monopoly will have been neutralized by market forces. Surely serving bad search results, and the ongoing geo-targeting problems Google now has, aren't helping Google at all. Google got to the top by serving quality results, stayed at the top by buying out their competitors and IMO it's the poor results/problems Google now has that will bring them down.

[gatormark]

@BigKat, EXACTLY! The Titanic saw the iceberg before it ran into it, but the ship was too unwieldy to respond in time.

[goodoldweb]

Devastating "core updates" and flooding the top part of the SERPS with thier own products have started way before AI. They've started a couple of years after the introduction of adwords and became more and more aggressive with every round.

Don't give them any credit. They're the problem. The way they control so many online businesses is mind blowing.

[gatormark]

Fortunately, my main website is community-based, so I still have a large core group of active users. Unfortunately, that crowd is getting older and they can pay for memberships that allow them to turn off ads. So, advertising income —my primary source of revenue —will eventually decline to zero.

[gatormark]

The bots are rampant. At one point, I could keep up a little, but now it's impossible. I block everything from China, Singapore, and Brazil, and it doesn't matter. Bots from those countries continue to get through, especially Singapore.

[seokees]

China, Singapore is going crazy. Calmed down late afternoon here.. But insane amounts.

[Micha]

Have you also noticed a significant drop in Google traffic? On a few pages I'm looking at right now, Google traffic has dropped to almost zero for about three hours, whereas before it was actually good.

[tangor]

Sometimes the real world gets in the way. Anyone consider these bot attacks might be deliberate? There's an escalation in tariff wars going on RIGHT NOW and will only get worse by Nov 1.

[seokees]

The positions are all over the place. Normal traffic, good traffic, no traffic.. Heavy ups and downs in the serps.

[chuviie]

China/Singa bots are not real, after blocked all IP’s from these countries they are still appearing in GA4. So, at most they are just stats hitters.

[Treud]

Yes they come from Google, even they hit a blocked website traffic is still sent from Google so it count has a view for them

I’ve Geoblock China and Singapore took 3 days to kill all traffic. Maybe I’m out of the bot listing or « black listed » :)

[ichthyous]

Have you also noticed a significant drop in Google traffic? On a few pages I'm looking at right now, Google traffic has dropped to almost zero for about three hours, whereas before it was actually good.

Yes, my search traffic is -33% this morning and direct traffic is -23%. USA -50%, UK -64%, Germany -41%. Yesterday was also weak, but not like this. Let's hope it's temporary...

[BigKat]

my search traffic is -33% this morning and direct traffic is -23%. USA -50%

The number of ChatGPT hits (real time scrapes from user searches) I'm seeing is rising. I wonder if a big part of the loss in Google traffic is because their user base is crumbling?

[gatormark]

@BigKat

Google‘s user base is not crumbling. It’s just that about 35% of its users are not moving past AI. That percentage will grow. So, Google has the same number of users; they are just not getting to us (websites) as frequently.

[ichthyous]

The number of ChatGPT hits (real time scrapes from user searches) I'm seeing is rising. I wonder if a big part of the loss in Google traffic is because their user base is crumbling?

My traffic from Google was very high in September trough about October 3rd or so and has dropped off since and become much less stable. It's not ChatGPT causing such a rapid decline. My traffic from ChatGPT and other AI platforms has grown steadily this entire year though.

More likely the effect of losing about 350 aged links from two high DA sites that went belly up and closed within a week of each other. I'm getting socked in the puss now. My own site's DA has dropped from 42 down to 36 lately. I know many on here think it's a false metric, but I actually find it to be fairly predictive of an increase or decrease in traffic if the DA increases or decreases. When I have had a higher DA the peaks and valleys of traffic seemed to be smoothed out somewhat.

[Micha]

So today I can say that Google News is completely crazy. Completely outdated news in my topic cluster, seems to be problems with updates. Demented traffic on the news site today is terrible. At least the shop is making sales.

Edit:
Google's AI is really rubbish. Today we published an article about a case of fraud, and now when you search for our name, that damn thing claims we're fraudsters because we sell overpriced cell phones to old people. It's slowly becoming less funny what this stupid piece of technology is doing.

[Conro]

@Micha Even for my site it said that it was dangerous because it allowed the download of malicious software, too bad that nothing can be downloaded from my site. Let's now calculate that artificial intelligence for site positioning also works in this way and this explains all the chaos and crap that has happened.

[gatormark]

This time of year, leading up to Christmas, is typically the best. Now, it's the worst in terms of revenue, and it is dropping each day. The crazy thing is that my real traffic is steady, but page RPM is dropping daily, and membership sales have stopped. Unbelievable!

[Micha]

What an extremely modest day today. Google has throttled everything again, Discover is dead, News is dead, normal search traffic is useless. So the news site is more dead than alive today. Shop: zero sales via Google traffic, traffic slump, etc. And all the other sites I monitor: exactly the same. If anyone tries to tell me again that this is a coincidence, I'll have the laugh of my life.

[Sivaraj]

We are also facing a heavy spike from china in recent times.

[RedBar]

Google is no longer generating any valid, new, genuine business enquiries for our global sites even thoug traffic volumes appear to be normal. Fortunately our repeat order customer base continues at their usual levels as per the past 50 years.

Our UK localised sites are steady for the time of year, they do not serve highly populated areas.

[Gagan_Kumar]

AI Overviews / summaries remain prominent, reducing clicks to content pages.

[Treud]

Years ago when i was receiving inquiries, customer were answering back, now I’m really questioning if they are not bot and they train to send inquiries…

All this AI stuff is going to fast, and I’m sure no one know where it’s going…

[Micha]

Google's AI is now available in Germany, and honestly, I've never seen such technological crap. The thing only delivers English pages and answered 30 questions completely wrong out of 30. So this is supposed to be the future? Humanity is screwed.

[Martin Ice Web]

BOTS are back!

[RedBar]

Years ago when i was receiving inquiries, customer were answering back, now I’m really questioning if they are not bot and they train to send inquiries…

Believe this or not the only "enquiries" I have received in the last 4 weeks have all been the same ... All for one of my .com domain names and all, except for one, at the same offer price.

I now have a standard reply template.

[breeks]

I was thinking how bad Google is, and then I took a look at Bing —it's just as bad, maybe even worse.

[christianz]

I was thinking how bad Google is, and then I took a look at Bing —it's just as bad, maybe even worse.

It seems like google and MS have a secret deal where MS has agreed not to move into search. Otherwise there is no explanation for why they didn't seize the easy opportunity to take huge market share from Google.

[Micha]

Visitor numbers on my news site have fallen to an all-time low this week. Google simply isn't updating the news feed and is only showing articles that are weeks old in my topic. Normal searches are generating virtually no clicks anymore... it's just frustrating, especially because you can see that the only sites that are working are the really big publishers. I'm slowly starting to believe that the internet is finished and that it doesn't matter what we do.

[RubicCubed]

I'm slowly starting to believe that the internet is finished and that it doesn't matter what we do.

Maybe the only truthful thing Google has ever said is the open web is in rapid decline. What Google failed to do is accept responsibility for their own actions that caused this rapid decline. Give it time and history will give Google the credit they deserve for this.

[Martin Ice Web]

@Micha, i think there was a roll back this week. Traffic has become better in the beginning of the week and then on wednesday it suddenly switch to very bad traffic with lots of bots again.

[Micha]

@martin, but there were no signs of this. According to Semrush and Co, everything is quiet. Something has happened at Discover, but a rollback would look different. I really don't understand what's going on at the moment, but another week and it will be a financial disaster.

[RedBar]

Still no realworld business enquiries however a consistent traffic week across all sites with no crazy spikes until today when Ten Cent Could Computing from Singapore decided to perform, like Huawei Singapore, individual url visits on one of my .asia sites from many IP addresses ... Needless to say those IP ranges are now blocked.

[Gotcha]

We are also facing a heavy spike from china in recent times.
[iili.io...]

[goodoldweb]

WOndering where all your shoppers have gone? Google Ads’ ‘Maximize Conversions’ option is a multi-dimensional black hole swallowing whatever is left of them.

[Micha]

Finally, we had a visit from a Google quality checker, and it seems that the handbrake has been removed from the news page again.

The shop is still at a standstill, which is really awful at the moment.

[gatormark]

Google is changing its search results every day. There is little consistency in rankings from day to day.

[christianz]

Finally, we had a visit from a Google quality checker

Quality checkers are a myth and they have zero impact on rankings - they don't flag or promote sites.

Over time they may have negative impact on rankings, because they create AI training corpus that teaches dumb AI systems to promote cookie-cutter copy-pasta cliche sites that "look legit" over unusual and useful sites that are actually legit.

Google is changing its search results every day

Yes but the direction of change is always for the worst. 12 months of deterioration in ranking capability. We are at a stage where what is actually on the page almost doesn't matter at all as far as ranking.

[gatormark]

I have two pages that are battling for position on pages three or four. LOL. One day, one page will show up on Google’s search results. The next day the other page will show up. Strangely, for 15 years or more one of them ranked high on page one until the August update. For some reason, that update killed me. I am still ranked number one on Bing, not that it generates much traffic.

[Micha]

@christianz I know... It was just funny that the referrer appeared and suddenly the visitor numbers went up. It's more likely that Discover is slowly releasing the handbrake.

[RedBar]

Someone in South America has acquired a very old database from somewhere.

I am seeing visits from several different South American countries to specific widget urls that have not existed for several years.

Question ... These urls generate a 404, do these bots/spiders recognise this and delete them from their database automatically similar to some mailing programmes?

[gatormark]

I am curious to see what the adoption rate will be for new browsers like Comet. I downloaded and install Comet recently and it absolutely does not help web developers like us. In many ways, it’s a killer of websites.Yeesh!

[RedBar]

I downloaded and install Comet recently

I wanted to try it, I got the impression I had to register and pay therefore it was goodbye!

[RedBar]

Oh, just gone back there and it's now installing!