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

[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!

[RedBar]

Comet uninstalled ... After checking a couple of my exclusive products of at least 35+ years and checking its sources etc, I wouldn't be able to trust its results.

Plus, is it me, I thougt enabling options by default was banned, or is this only in Europe?

[christianz]

The only question I have about something like Comet browser or AI assistants in general is how to block them. I am not interested in hosting anything for any non-human agents. End of discussion.

Comet and ChatGPT and all the rest of them are always welcome to scrape AI slop sites and marketing texts (increasingly also AI generated lol).

[Whitey]

If anyone is willing to contribute to this thread: [webmasterworld.com...] it would be great to have some more feedback.

I only came across some Perplexity ads today promoting the desktop free Comet browser, so was fishing for various perspectives, before I dive in and test it myself.

[RedBar]

Ten Cent Cloud Computing Singapore ignores robots.txt

[Micha]

Okay, this is getting weird. Could it be that Google is running an update right now? That would explain the back and forth.

[shadowlight]

Okay, this is getting weird. Could it be that Google is running an update right now? That would explain the back and forth.

The SERPS are in a constant state of flux, at least from what I see. Not only is rank consistently changing but several times throughout the day when I look, for the same search terms the layout of the SERP changes with the usual clutter changing position, this is everyday.

They will be doing this to constantly test the layouts that produce the most ad clicks. This will be the reason for the back and forth. Clearly they are putting all their efforts into optimizing their own revenue at the expense of everything else.

So many search refinements leading to SERPs and ADs, no doubt they will use this data in continuing to proclaim that the ecosystem is thriving because there are a lot more searches being conducted and more ads being clicked.

Sadly this is only going to get worse to the point where something will have to give. They can only milk the SERPs so much before there is nothing left to extract.

Some of the layouts are horrendous (for web site & business owners).

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[Micha]

The SERPS are in a constant state of flux, at least from what I see. Not only is rank consistently changing but several times throughout the day when I look, for the same search terms the layout of the SERP changes with the usual clutter changing position, this is everyday.

I can confirm that, by the way, and the headline box is totally crazy.

[ichthyous]

USA traffic seems permanently suppressed now. My USA traffic starts at -50% to -69% every day and ends flat if I am lucky. It's almost noon and USA is -49% this morning. Most days it's jumping up late and ending lower by ~ 5-10%.

Meanwhile, non-USA traffic is generally strong, but rotating sharp drops...i.e. one day UAE will be normal or even higher, the next day -27%. Same with UK, Germany, Australia, etc. It seems that Google is rotating the page layouts, number of ads and widgets etc across all markets now to maximize clicks on ads.

In other news...OpenAI has launched a browser, along with Perplexity. I think the days of Chrome's dominance are coming to an end. I think these new browsers will be rapidly adopted. Not that it will help any of us, and it will most likely be worse.

[edited by: ichthyous at 3:26 pm (utc) on Oct 22, 2025]

[not2easy]

There may be enough people unaware of privacy concerns to use the new AI browsers, but in the long run, they may figure out that everything they do, say or see online becomes the property of AI generators. Makes Chrome look tame.

[RedBar]

Apart from those annoying Singaporean bots my Argentinean, Brazilian and Uruguayan visitors are increasing. They're all going to valid urls DIRECT with no referring link , no enquiries as yet, strange.

[ichthyous]

There may be enough people unaware of privacy concerns to use the new AI browsers, but in the long run, they may figure out that everything they do, say or see online becomes the property of AI generators. Makes Chrome look tame

This is exactly right...I won't touch an OpenAI browser if you paid me for this reason. Everything you do will be fed to the AI datset. Sam Altman from OpenAi is proving to be as amoral as Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. However, many if not most, people will love it and not have any concern. I know someone who talks to his AI chatbot like it's his best friend. He uses it for everything and it is already deeply embedded in his life...it's actually very creepy to see the interaction as there is an emotional attachment there. If a new technology can do everything for them then they won't worry too much about the consequences because they feel that they can't control it anyway.

[Martin Ice Web]

@redbar, we are seeing the same. But now this "visitors" are all mobil traffic. And this traffic comes in surges like 2 minutes and then they are gone for somke time.

[mcneely]

I usually do light audits once per month w/regard to traffic on my sites.

Over the past year, the ecomm sites have only really ever done well at regional levels while the other mag/news sites have done well with all of the focus or targeting being toward U.K., AUS, CAN, and the U.S..

Best traffic lately for the ecomm's are from the U.S. which is understandable (tariffs) but I was surprised to see an actual jump in organic traffic when I dumped U.K. from the mix and added it's larger ip ranges to the firewall last month. Not real sure what's going on in the U.K. these days but applying the same rules there as I do from Ukraine and Georgia have worked out pretty well.

Best ROI is coming from the U.S. and AUS currently for any ad ventures, and I'm pleasantly surprised that Bing is actually making a show (up to 25% organic) over the past few months. Barely ever got 2% from Bing before.

Google has fallen off a cliff.

Still seeing listings in the page 2 to 4 ranges across the board.
I've also actually started to aggressively write certain mobile devices out in htaccess. We're getting a ton of rubbish from those lately.

[Cryogen]

Since October the 12th I can see a massive drop in traffic in Google analytics, almost 80% drop. But at the same time Google search console shows no drop whatsoever in impressions and ranking. My cloudflare statistics also don't show any drop in visitors, and even one tiny plugin that I use on my site directly (I think it is called top 10 views) shows only a very modest drop in views in the past several days.

Could it be that there is some glitch in reporting in GA in general, or perhaps (as chat GPT suggests) maybe there is some problem with firing GA script on my site..

Is anyone else seeing something similar? GA shows massive drop in traffic but everyone else doesn't show anything similar?

[saladtosser]

@ichthyous the people who use AI for everything seem to think its okay because it doesn't impact them negatively, *yet*. What they don't seem to understand is that everything is interlinked and it *will* impact them as their taxes will have to go up to fund a ballooning welfare bill. The tax payer is the one hit, not the tech bros who put the people on welfare. More wealth transfer from the many to the few!

On a positive note, some seem to think greedy tech bros will bank roll all 8 + billion obsolete (and angry) humans around the world the rest of their unproductive lives with UBI, so its all rainbows & unicorn asses ahead I guess!

[Chris travel 30]

GSC: Does anyone else see something like this: My latest stats in GSC are from Sunday, 19th October and have not been updated since. Same with the "indexed sites", they have last been updated on 18th October.

[Micha]

@Chris Yes, it's the same for me.

[rustybrick]

Google finally confirmed the GSC bug and is working on a fix [x.com...]

[Chris travel 30]

thanks @rustybrick.

Guys, there is something cooking at googles. I smell it.
For me, SERPs and layout of these are kind of roulette. And the traffic send by google is useless since 48 hours. Users, active like hibernating turtles.

[BigKat]

For me, SERPs and layout of these are kind of roulette.

For us, I'm consistently seeing the same ad heavy/spammy layout followed by AIO as shadowlight posted above. Organic results are pushed so deep down the page with this spammy layout that there's not much traffic to speak of. We're ecom in the USA. Our sales are doing ok thanks to the other search engines which tend to send more traffic/conversions during times when Google is using gimmicks to milk the SERPS for more revenue.