March 2026 Google Search Observations

[Micha]

Weird month: News site back in Discover, so numbers are good, revenue is okay, even though RPM is still pretty low. Shop revenue up a whopping 44% compared to February last year.

Overall: The ranking is jumping back and forth, which is really wild. But for the first time in a long time, I can finally be satisfied again.

[edited by: not2easy at 11:24 am (utc) on Mar 1, 2026]
[edit reason] New month, new thread [/edit]

[Fluff_Nutz]

Bing is the exact same right now. Both B and G are in constant daily drop mode. In fact looking into it, these drops have been on-going as far back as January, if not longer. So it is a really long ''update'' if this is actually going to end? I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't. I actually read an article some months back about members of Google talking about completely removing sites altogether being an idea. It was them contemplating the thought at the time but I wouldn't be surprised if they went ahead with it. With the amount of garbage and what the SERP currently looks like, its certainly possible.

Due to the amount of garbage on the search, traffic is terrible even if a rare increase shows. So good traffic increases is an over exaggeration. I'll admit. I'm just lucky to have other sources that seem to be working. But for how long, who knows? But I doubt we will see good traffic any more unless the SERP was cleaned up, highly unlikely to happen though, sadly.. Good days are over.. It's really disturbing how a company as big as G. who owns the monopoly. Who is practically Skynet. Can only give you the same amount of traffic as another, similar company, with the only difference being they don't have a monopoly. Gives you a good idea of what real greed truly looks like

Thankfully due to other sources the revenue is increasing again. Alas, overall traffic is still -30%

[ichthyous]

I'm still seeing a constant erosion of top-3 ranking terms...at first very large drops and now a slow drip of losses each day. Visibility for the the high-traffic terms that has been whacked in a round-robin fashion for six weeks is recovering for the second time. I had disappeared completely but snapped back into place again for some terms, but the ranking is jumping around a lot.

The results are now absolutely packed with "how to" articles and how-to youtube videos page after page....lots of new small sites but basically all repeating the same content. It strikes me that Google is weeding out anything that might be e-comm or sales oriented completely from the main results and segmenting those sites into the shopping tab only. That won't be good for me as my customers aren't looking to buy the cheap crap that predominates in the large ecomm sites which dominate the shopping results.

[Micha]

Google seems to have it in for online stores. Our store is currently getting a lot of traffic from Google, but zero sales from visitors coming from Google. Our news site, on the other hand, is booming. As for the rankings, they’re still changing practically by the hour, and according to Semrush, an update is still underway..

[RedBar]

Without being political I am seeing devastation in my global construction sector with projects being postponed indefinitely and current production supplies put "on-hold". Trade associations "claim" ME cancellations are down 40%, many shipping companies are not accepting new consignments and, obviously, being extremely careful if / when quoting costings.

I'm not even sure if the survival of the fittest applies any longer but what I am being informed is that there may deinitely be a change in attitude by many producers towards some export markets.

[Fixithome]

From what I’ve observed in the past couple of weeks, Google’s SERPs have been unusually volatile. Some keywords are moving between page 1 and page 2 almost daily, which suggests Google may be testing smaller algorithm adjustments rather than rolling out one large update.

One noticeable trend is that topical authority and brand signals seem to matter more now. Sites that publish consistent, niche-focused content appear more stable compared to sites pushing large volumes of generic AI content.

For example, in the home improvement and interior design niche, a site I work with called Fixit Home focuses mainly on flooring, carpets, curtains, blinds, and interior fit-out guides. Pages that provide practical project insights and structured internal linking seem to be holding rankings better despite the recent fluctuations.

So far the pattern I’m seeing is:
• stronger brand/entity signals
• more importance on topical clusters
• weaker performance from thin or repetitive content

[Martin Ice Web]

So far the pattern I’m seeing is:
• stronger brand/entity signals
• more importance on topical clusters
• weaker performance from thin or repetitive content

I can not see this but the opposite.

[christianz]

So far the pattern I’m seeing is:
• stronger brand/entity signals
• more importance on topical clusters
• weaker performance from thin or repetitive content

I think you are right. In this version of Google it doesn't matter that you have the best and most relevant content. You need to:

A) Set up a brick & mortar office on Fifth Avenue and reference this address in your site
B) Become a government organization and host your site under .org domain
C) Wrap all your useful content in useless AI slop to avoid "thin content"

[Micha]

@chistianz What? I thought you just had to parrot the nonsense that self-proclaimed SEO experts spout all day long

[ichthyous]

From what I’ve observed in the past couple of weeks, Google’s SERPs have been unusually volatile. Some keywords are moving between page 1 and page 2 almost daily, which suggests Google may be testing smaller algorithm adjustments rather than rolling out one large update.

One noticeable trend is that topical authority and brand signals seem to matter more now. Sites that publish consistent, niche-focused content appear more stable compared to sites pushing large volumes of generic AI content.

I would agree with this...we are seeing a constant update and my bet is that it won't end, it will just keep updating daily. I am seeing different parts of my site vanish entirely...going from ranking top 3 to non-existent and an 80%+ loss in traffic. A few days later it pops back into place again. This has been rolling for almost two months now.

I would also agree that Google is favoring results with very narrow topics and focus. My site does not contain any AI-gen content at all, but it does depend on broad categories and each of them functions as a kind of site within a site. These larger and broader sites are getting whacked. I dropped 10 top 3 ranking terms overnight...since this all started I have lost almost a quarter of my top ranking terms. Haven't seen that kind of move in years. And the drops continue.

[Micha]

There was another drop today; Discover is stagnating, and the rankings have plummeted (it’s funny to watch: for my main keyword, the top three spots change every time I refresh the browser). The shop is also stagnating right now. Same story: the rankings have plummeted. And according to Semrush, there’s still a lot of activity; it hasn’t stopped since mid-February. It would be nice to finally figure out what Google is up to.

[Martin Ice Web]

@Micha, this is strange. Since yesterday we experience more traffic and more sales. So we are on different rivebanks.

I guess that google switched the serps to AI. No more fixed algo.
And what I learnd about google gemini is, that it is extremly incorrect in certain verticals.

[Micha]

@martin: As for the shop, I expect we’ll see a few more sales today—the last few days have gone really well. But the news section seems to be getting reshuffled by Google again. I just noticed this on a few websites: There was a spike on Sunday, and now we’re seeing a decline.

[Martin Ice Web]

OK traffic is gone again.
Just for fun i switched of the anti-bot feature. Withhin seconds hundreds of pages-visits.

So u can tell me what u want but google is responsible for the bot traffic.

[ichthyous]

I guess that google switched the serps to AI. No more fixed algo.

This is what I think too. I am seeing the SERPS change inter-day now. I can see one category on my site down 50-80% in the morning, then suddenly revert back to a more normal traffic pattern as the SERPS change, then back down next day. It seems that we are in for a bumpy ride, and this shift is going to be brutally bad for those of use who were used to ranking at the top for years across multiple terms. It's not that you simply drop a bit, I am swinging between ranking in the top 3 and not appearing at all. It's on / off.

I do wonder if Google is choosing to weed out businesses which appear in the local google map results so that they don't also appear again on page one. Let us hope that Google gets over this crappy experiment and returns to sanity, as the results are now full of repetitive instagram profiles, youtube videos and how-to blog posts page after page.

[Micha]

Whatever Google did yesterday, it was terrible. Traffic to the news site has completely plummeted, rankings have crashed, and it was the same for the shop.

Also: The top three results for every keyword change with every refresh. At times yesterday, my news site wasn’t even findable for the most important keywords. And: Suddenly, English and Spanish websites are ranking at the top for German search terms. The headline boxes are displaying completely unknown forums in the title fields, strange pages that contain only one sentence and a link, and so on. It’s total chaos right now.

[Martin Ice Web]

@Micha, it got worse in the night. Never seen this bad traffic and se-results.

[Micha]

@martin, I'm glad I got stuck in Anno last night ;). But things seem to be improving now. Traffic is picking up again. It's just the shop that's still glitching.

Overall, the search results have improved a bit, at least there aren't any forums in the headlines anymore.

[ichthyous]

I woke up to another big loss of top-3 ranking terms...I've steadily lost 33% of my top rank terms on desktop in the last two months, and -25% on mobile. Top ten ranking terms also hit hard. Have any of you also seen this same trend?

It coincides with a big reported drop in backlinks in GSC. The links are all still there, just not being indexed anymore. I am seeing major moves for a lot of competitors too, and some very high-quality stable sites. They have simply vanished and only appear sporadically. If this is the new normal we are cooked as my USA traffic is -20% daily for almost ten days now.

Finally, one other factor at play...I have noticed that when an AIO appears at the top of the search it now tries to take over the search in a new window completely, and it's confusing and not so easy to close out of it and get back to the results. Google is clearly doing this intentionally to keep users in the AIO environment and make it harder for them to continue searching using the organic links. It's a real pain in the ass to use and I can't see how this helps them from a user perspective...it's more annoying than helpful.

[morpheus83]

@micha, yes things are getting better, hopefuly these damned update is coming to an end

[gronetwork]

Go check the consultation from the UK CMA (Competition & Markets Authority) about Google having a "Strategic Market Status" and needing "Conduct Requirements" (Fair dealing: direct interaction with Google; Open choices: choice between the services provided by the firm; Trust and transparency: clear information about the services provided by Google).

The CMA proposes the possibility for publishers to opt out of generative AI features in Google Search (AI Overview, AI Mode).

[gov.uk...]

Feedbacks:

It is interesting to see major Web actors such as Cloudflare, the BBC, and The Guardian being pretty vocal about defending publishers' revenue. They suggest that the proposition of the CMA is not enough and a crawler separation is required to reach the goal of the CMA. Googlebot being separated into a regular crawler for traditional search and a crawler for Generative AI data training, as Anthropic and OpenAI are doing with separated crawlers. It would allow publishers to block the AI crawler from Google. Additionally, an independent regulatory entity should verify that the crawlers are indeed separated. Like the Financial Times, they are well aware that these AI features are phagocytizing publishers. They are doing their part to put Google back in its place in this consultation. They are also proposing that Google should show the statistics of appearances for citations and clicks in the AI features separately in Google Analytics.

Google's reaction is very childish; they are answering like a 5-year-old, directly showing their teeth, saying that there is nothing wrong with their operations, and that everything is perfect, fair, and smooth. They claim that there is only a handful of complainants in the consultation. They argue that the crawler separation would cost them too much and would be inefficient. Their answer is a long protest repeating that there is a bias in the complainants. There is clearly nothing to hope for from them ever. They have gone full into the AI madness.

Also, it is interesting to see Microsoft, which is not criticizing Google, saying that they are against crawler separation (they are doing the same as G, using bingbot to feed their own AI Summary / Copilot). They claim it would just create duplicate databases, requiring more resources and more servers...

Mozilla's answer is pretty bland; they are just interested in the presentation of a "Search Choice Screen". They have nothing to say about Google or publishers.

For the moment, Google says that it will only give publishers the possibility to opt out of its AI services, nothing more.

[morpheus83]

SEM Rush's tracker has dropped by 0.2 points after a good 40 days. Anyone seeing any effects?

[Martin Ice Web]

I can tell U that we are outranked by a site with only 2 words (same as title) , one picture and one buy button on it.
It ranks for a popular term on #3.

So all google is doing with every update, is reducing the quality of serps.

[Micha]

Google seems to be targeting online stores right now. Only the news site bounced back quickly. The store has been running on low power since Tuesday... Oh, and I've noticed the same thing Martin mentioned with the store, too.

[RedBar]

So all google is doing with every update, is reducing the quality of serps.

I am seeing three types for my SERPs.

1. For my popular widgets I am seeing mostly image ads usually with tempting prices. There are usually some unnoticeable regular SERPs, sometimes as few as six.

2. For my less popular widgets I rarely see any ads with the SERPs looking completely normal and usually valid.

3. And then there are the "middling" widgets. Not the most popular but for which there is a constant but not high demand. These SERPs vary greatly from completely normal to quite a few image ads. Think back 10+ years, actually it may be 15 yars. A reasonable SERPs layout with equally mingled regular SERPs with ads.

In short, I am seeing nothing but image ads through to completely regular and a mostly relevant SERPs.

[RubicCubed]

Google seems to be targeting online stores right now.

I think Google is more broadly prioritizing their own revenue. The end of Q1 2026 is only ten days away, and Google has to stuff their pockets with as much money as they can to make shareholders happy.

Google's current layout is extremely ad heavy, even when those ads aren't relevant to the search term. Meanwhile the most relevant organic results are buried on page two and beyond to give users little choice but to click ads, click page 2+ to view the next set of serps (and more ads) or use a different search engine.

[Micha]

According to Semrush, the update Google is currently rolling out is slowly starting to ease off.

It’s been an interesting few days: my news site has lost quite a bit of ranking (according to Sistrix), but Discover is performing very steadily, better than before the drop in October. RPM is also fairly stable, and revenue is finally back in the range where we’re operating profitably. The shop, however, is struggling. Since the drop last Tuesday, sales from Google traffic have been extremely poor. Yesterday was the first day that revenue picked up a bit, but it’s still far from what we were getting from Google before.

Well, the search results are just as bad as ever, though I’m seeing fewer AI-generated summaries on Google

[RedBar]

For my global site it's been a very low traffic weekend and continuing into today, understandably West Asia is very quiet and will probably stay so until "whenever"!

As a sort of an aside in the pub ... Many people are commenting they are delaying / cancelling holiday plans. Is that just here or across the industry generally?

[ichthyous]

Traffic is atrocious and not getting any better. I am seeing most of my formerly top ranking terms drop down 40+ spots in ranking every other day practically, then jump right back up. There is a whole new crop of how to articles that have taken over page one and two, plus more AI than ever. Let us also not underestimate the impact of a global oil shock and people reeling in spending due to higher expected costs. I just think that people are not looking to shop right now, and the ones that are all seem delusional in their expectations.

[Micha]

Google has just rolled out a spam update

[status.search.google.com ]

[Fluff_Nutz]

Another ''update''? Can't say I'm surprised but the last one didn't even end. It really is non-stop now, isn't it..

I'll admit for the past 2-3 days traffic had seemingly settled. After 2-3 months of rocky madness. Alas, I wouldn't hold my breath on it lasting. More so with, now, another ''upda-- ''profitdate''. Let's just call it that from now on.. *SIGH* There is literally no growth when these things kick in. I have already had to witness two months of terrible traffic and revenue levels. Can't catch a break..

[Martin Ice Web]

Google has just rolled out a spam update

so google is removing itself from their own index?

[christianz]

If Google says this is "spam update" that is 100% guarantee that least spammy sites will get hurt the most, like it always happens with "spam updates".

[Micha]

Huh? The update is over?
[x.com ]

[RedBar]

Huh? The update is over?

Obviously zero spam to be found anywhere :-)

[Micha]

They probably found some, but they definitely didn't want to make the search results useful, so they stopped the update ;)

[mosxu]

Guys,

They are finished! Tech is like one better idea makes a big company go to hell!
AI is almost open source now!

Asta la vista baby!

[Micha]

They're really getting on my nerves. Guys, we've got a core update.

[status.search.google.com ]

[RedBar]

Maybe they've realised the core is rotten?

[shadowlight]

Whatever update they do, core or otherwise it will no doubt be good for their own revenue and detrimental to almost everyone else's.

[Gotcha]

I’ve issue with my tech blog for the past two years. While Bing seems to favor my content and ranks my articles quite well, Google appears to completely ignore it — and I still don’t understand why.
Over three years, my website has gained several high-quality, natural backlinks, which should normally help improve its authority in Google’s eyes. However, despite these efforts, there has been little to no improvement in rankings on Google. This discrepancy between search engines is both frustrating and difficult to explain.

[freeimage.host]
[freeimage.host]

[christianz]

First impressions of the "March Core Update" are very bad.

[Micha]

The rankings are fluctuating, but Discover has been on fire for the past two days, my news site has never had this many visitors before. The shop had a great day yesterday, but today has been slow; Sunday and the Easter break might be the reason.

[saladtosser]

Are people even buying/spending right now based on the uncertainty of the war, the current petrol/gas price (with higher prices to come) and forthcoming food/product/everything Trumpflation?

[christianz]

Never mind Trumpflation. The bigger issue is Google completely being unable to rank websites. They have never been this bad. Even the AI overview content theft and erosion of clicks is nothing compared to total inability to rank actual websites/webpages.

[Fluff_Nutz]

I am seeing some people are, currently, unaffected by this recent ''profitdate''. Sadly I cannot say the same over here. As of, exactly, March 27th our site has been on, another, daily traffic drop. Funnily enough that is exactly when this new headache began.. We have quite literally been dropping traffic, like some kind of waterfall, non-stop, since Jan/Feb. Currently a -45% drop as of this one alone. I dread to count how much traffic has been lost overall this year, so far..

[Martin Ice Web]

Very, very worse update again. with every core update the serps relevance drops further. This is going for over a year now.
I don´t know where google is heading to. For me this SE is completly useless. Two years ago I would never ever thought that bing would be so much better than google.

The outstanding features that google standed for have now been vanished. Chaos and complete useless serps with SPAM, outdated and low content websites are now on daily order.

Such a shame.

[christianz]

Very, very worse update again. with every core update the serps relevance drops further. This is going for over a year now.

Correct. Google is dead.

I am having record high bandwidth use with record low traffic - it's all AI theft bots stealing my content like crazy. They are much smarter than Google, they know where the good stuff is.

[BigKat]

Correct. Google is dead.

it's all AI theft bots stealing my content like crazy.

Absolutely correct Google is dead. I wonder how long it will be until businesses start blocking Google since they are also stealing content? That's a discussion that we actually had in a meeting because Google is using content they stole from us to promote ads of competing inferior products.

[gronetwork]

I am having record high bandwidth use with record low traffic - it's all AI theft bots stealing my content like crazy. They are much smarter than Google, they know where the good stuff is.

Same here; I receive over a million requests a day from Comcast, Frontier, Charter, AT&T, Cablevision, and Verizon. Last week, my server was crashing constantly for several days because of these bots. I doubt even Cloudflare can block them (maybe with the Enterprise version and a bot score below 30). Nowadays, a captcha is required for each U.S. user. The number of actual visits continues to plummet.

What is sad is that if you search for "web scraping", you will find services that propose to rent thousands of IPs (from western ISPs) to scrape the web. You will also find a lot of advice on GitHub and Reddit about how to scrape websites efficiently. And of course, practically no help on how to prevent it.

At a certain point, it will be pointless for them to harvest data as most of it will be AI.

[Shepherd]

Bless their little google heart, never thought it would be possible to muck up their organic and ads with one update...