February 2026 Google Search Observations

[jmccormac]

@Christianz That is is a fascinating insight. All of the SG maggots I have seen are just scraping raw html. There have been a few Starlink attempts on other pages but those pages are rate limited. What I have seen in some of the monthly gTLD Website/IP surveys is that some gTLD websites are hosted on Starlink customer IPs. Given the rise of residental proxies, there may also be a connection there with some of the SG maggots (crawlers and spiders being from search engines, maggots being from AI/scraper botnets).

Regards...jmcc

[edited by: not2easy at 11:48 am (utc) on Feb 11, 2026]
[edit reason] New month, new thread [/edit]

[Martin Ice Web]

Record low traffic today (abotu 10 % of normal traffic )
Sales are gone completly.
Bots at +200%.
Record sales on amazon since 2 days.

[RedBar]

the nonsensical tariffs

I'm not trying to start a political argument here but I am not paying the US Govt any tariff although my US customers are doing, we used to call it an Import Duty, the importer paid that tax and it was passed on down the distribution chain to the retail customer but, of course, they never saw that duty charge simply a higher retail price and also, obviously, a higher price for public and/or commercial projects.

In my industry there is no alternative US mass production source, am I missing something simple?

[Micha]

@martin I find that strange; I have a completely different situation. My news site is again seeing heavy Google traffic today. My shop had record sales yesterday, and today is also going extremely well.

In general, the bots have finally given up completely. It's strange that things are so extremely different.

[Martin Ice Web]

@Micha,

that is indeed strange. We had record sales in the first half of februar. Last thursday things went down the hill and since two days we can almost see the ground.
Never seen so bad traffic ever. Even panda algo was an Kindergeburstag compared to this update.

Bots are now coming from Seychelles.

[RedBar]

Bots are now coming from Seychelles.

I've had those for years however they've done so very little I've never bothered about them.

[Jmh90]

@martin

This is almost identical to us, we we're on course for a record month and in recent days everything has just completely collapsed, we're UK based. What is most confusing is Google Ads is one of our main channels, even that has just completely stopped converting despite spend remaining consistent, it's not the first time other channels have stopped performing when it coincides with an organic update but it's so difficult to get to the bottom of why Google Ads in particular has completely stopped converting.

I also manage a UK blood testing website, it's the complete opposite for them, in the second half of Feb they are seeing record days after a slower first half of the month.

[Fluff_Nutz]

Well, according to my website stats I am receiving traffic However, according to Analytics I am not receiving anything. In fact most of my traffic sources have disappeared. It's either a bug/glitch or really slow in updating. It's been like this for a few days now. Completely destroying this months overall stats. Revenue has returned too. Definitely a GA problem

I thought maybe its down to removing Google Site Kit but do I actually need it? I'll readd it if its having a negative impact on traffic figures. But according to search its optional. Also, this ''update'' feels like its been going on for ages now.. Me and the team are taking a break until its over. As everything we were posting had no impact on any actual growth, waste of time and effort

[TeeKay]

"Me and the team are taking a break until its over"

This resonates.

I've noticed that, as Google re-crawls pages of my site, major shifts are happening. A big-time reshuffling, as it were.

Can't be arsed with it anymore today, so I'm going to shut my laptop for the day, do some DIY jobs instead, and then have a look at things again tomorrow.

[morpheus83]

Finally the update is officially over.

[Fluff_Nutz]

Seems so. Wow 21 days, feels longer than that. Also, Analytics seems to be back to normal too. I think... My fault, maybe? I do seem to be the only one who had the issue.. Lesson learnt..

[status.search.google.com ]

[System]

New month, new thread here: [webmasterworld.com...]

[edited by: not2easy at 11:26 am (utc) on Mar 1, 2026]
[edit reason] New month, new thread [/edit]