May 2026 Google Search Observations

[Micha]

Things are really up and down right now. Traffic is suddenly back, and so are sales (even though yesterday was a holiday here). Sistrix says our rankings are improving nicely again. Let's see how long it lasts this time.

The only thing that’s been stable for days: less spam.

[edited by: not2easy at 11:19 am (utc) on May 2, 2026]
[edit reason] New month, new thread [/edit]

[RedBar]

Google wants to promote sellers that sell products using Google Ads

I have been posting this and about localisation for at least 10 maybe 12 years,probably 2014 when I went fully html5.

It was inevitable, G has globalised classified advertising, G ads have replaced many older forms of adverting at lower cost for many types of business but not all by a long, long way.

For the overwhelming majority the www has matured and, in general, people are comfortable with it, they know where they're going together with their preferences. Unless one has an exclusive new product do not expect anything revolutionary to happen, it is very unlikely to.

However in my experience, 33rd year this year Chris, if one is seriously researching "whatever" it is still a fantastic resource. For sure there is a load of spam plus AI garbage out there but for the seriously-minded quality is still there, just don't expect millions of visitors or a quick route to millions of Dollars.

For many now, and definitely me, our sites are specialised niches just like low volume printed book runs used to be.

[MrSnuts]

@RedBar - that was well-said, low-volume niche publications we are.

I'm noticing a nice traffic & conversion boost since yesterday, despite having 50% less pages indexed compared to two weeks ago.
I'm beyond believing any google trend will stick for longer than two weeks.

[RedBar]

Whoa, wtf is happening?

Yesterday my global site's traffic was 33%, today after half my Googleday it's at 10% ... Yep, 10% with none, as in zero, from China, and I always have genuine trade visitors from there.

Not yet another update?

[Micha]

The weekend was pretty good; the shop is slowly recovering. The news site, however, is on a roll: rankings have improved so much that we have topic dominance for our most important keywords. Discover has been stable for days (never thought I'd see the day) and today is looking very strong as well. Since Google rolled out "Preferred Sources" worldwide, I’ve been seeing more and more clicks in Matomo on the button we slapped onto the page. I wonder if that triggered the current situation or is at least playing into it.

And the best part: we currently have some peace and quiet from bot armies.

[christianz]

Too bad 90% of the Internet are not news sites or shops. I am seeing the worst SERPs ever, the worst rankings, the worst traffic and the most bot traffic ever and it only gets worse.

[RedBar]

Too bad 90% of the Internet are not news sites or shops.

And precisely why when anyone searches for anything that GBDY all know from their data it is what the majority are seaching for therefore those are the results seen. If this is not what someone is searching for then be more refined with the search term.

christianz ... You are probably doing nothing wrong however GBDY go with the mass simplistic searches and answers, we, as SEOers, have to be more accurate and definitive with OUR answers. Going for the big popular keywords hasn't worked for probably 15 years, that's one of the many reasons so many gave up in 2015/16.

If you personally want to see alternative results then use a VPN, it opens up a completely different world ... Well, in my industry it does:-)

[Micha]

@christianz That’s true, but we mustn’t forget that the situation here in Germany is somewhat different from that in the US, for example. Google doesn’t exert as much pressure here yet, and media consumption habits are different.

[Treud]

Seems I can access the website again ! with all the bots from everywhere sometimes my IP is blocked from Taiwan


Anyway, that said, I see the same, and 3 weeks ago been scrapped like never by bots (Germany) and China (Lanzhou). The quantity of bots is massive, and even running ads on facebook I receive message that are also bots...

This week situation is big sink around the 11th...

If at least bots could pay and place orders :D

[morpheus83]

@Micha have you also set up your google publisher page?

[Micha]

@morpheus83 I didn't set it up, but Google created a profile like that for my site.

[Chris travel 30]

So, I guess there is always something up at Gs, but in the last 72 hours, there is def something weird. 18 May was the best sales day we ever had, and just after that, everything is completly wasted (?). Nope, thats not "user-bahavior", thats just G making things up.

[Micha]

@chris I can confirm that, by the way, it’s the same here. Both the shop and the news page are getting next to no traffic today.

[RedBar]

Sunday lowest day of the month very little African / Asian traffic.

Tuesday highest day of the month, traffic like 2-3 years ago, highest country was Egypt.

Yeah G, completely normal behaviour!

[Martin Ice Web]

Can confirm too. Tuesday was very good. Yesterday till noon it was ok. But since it got worse and even worse over night.
Bots are at a new high again. Switching of my anti-bot rules results in immediatly storm of bots.

Fore sure a new quality update underway.

[saladtosser]

I think the final nail in our coffins is about to be hit [youtu.be...]

[joyroft]

Google rankings suddenly disappeared. Then, some sites, like keyword911, switched to keyword991, or even LSI and longtail. It's been almost a week without any progress. I've optimized various backlink methods, but they only last a few hours and then disappear. Is everyone experiencing the same thing?

[RedBar]

@MIW

Bots are at a new high again.

I see the MSFT bots regularly on 20th/21st.

Are you seeing lots of "iphone" bot visits coming from many different IPs / locations? One page then back again 5 seconds later on the same specific quiet page, not the index?

Yesterday on my global site I had thosands of pages downloaded BUT cannot find in my logs / programmes who it was, bizarre !

[seokees]

Core update -> [status.search.google.com...]

[gronetwork]

@saladtosser

A Reddit user made a joke on April 1st, announcing the end of the blue links. And less than two months later, it is becoming a reality…

TechCrunch: "Google Search as you know it is over" [techcrunch.com...]

We can expect Bing to follow the same trend; they always copy Google's latest features.

The only country that is preventing the deployment of AI Overview and AI Mode is France. The rest of the world swallows the pill without a word. They are completely subservient to Google. They are too afraid of not being able to benefit from the future advantages of their AI.

My website was down the last 3 days, I have millions of unique IP from data scrapers from all over the world and they have practically all a referral; I am no more able to block them automatically with a PHP script. I am manually listing the IP ranges with Nftables, it is taking an eternity. I have to block all countries from Latin America, all India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Vietnam ... too much abusers. Unfortunately, I'm seeing more and more ISP IPs originating from Europe. Also, the emergence of IPs from the new Stargate datacenters (OpenAI).

From what I understand only the 200$ per month business plan of Cloudflare can stop a such flow of unique IPs. All the captcha services are too costly.

Ten years ago, I thought the Internet would always continue to improve, and that it would always become easier for publishers and internet users; I was very naive.

What we are experiencing in our sector offers a glimpse into how AI companies will treat businesses worldwide in the future. And into the subservience of governments and commissions, which will remain passive.

[Martin Ice Web]

Core upate: that explains the sharp drop yesterday: again 50%.

[saladtosser]

@gronetwork I suspect that, because we have a gelatinous, corrupt robber baron in the White House, Google is seizing the opportunity for unmitigated mass content theft, knowing that by the time the Epstein class is voted out, there won’t be enough of a web left to justify Google and these other morally bankrupt companies reversing course.

If the web is destroyed, or weakened to the point where rich independent content is no longer being produced or taken down, these AI companies will then be able to charge in a ChatGPT-style subscription model (with and without ads) because they pulled up the ladder and a future POSSIBLE actual real search engine wouldnt get off the ground having nothing meaningful left to index because the content that made the web valuable in the first place would already have been taken, absorbed and taken down by the originator because of expenses of hosting the now un visited content.

AI replacement of search will become the de facto option, and these tech giants can then charge users a monthly fee to access the content in their AI, you know the same content they took from us, while we paid hosting for the privilege.

[christianz]

Another awful core "update". The only upside is that Google SERPs were already fantastically bad before this update, so the impact won't matter much.

[christianz]

@saladtosser we have to wait until the Epstein administration is replaced by something else before there is any chance of healing of the Web. That's not political talk, that's strictly industry reality.

[ichthyous]

I came to see if there was an update...first my visibility surged, now dropped through the floor. I knew something had to be up. This time I did not get any traffic bump or increase in inquiries at the beginning as I normally do.

[RedBar]

So far this weekend my global site has been very quiet however I did expect this with both US and UK having an extra day plus in much of Europe there is very warn weather at long last.

And then there is the hotel multi functions business with all departments very busy on the website especially the restaurants and live music pages.

Altogether as expected with only one more UK public holiday here until Xmas!

[ichthyous]

@saladtosser we have to wait until the Epstein administration is replaced by something else before there is any chance of healing of the Web. That's not political talk, that's strictly industry reality.

Very true...but we are in an age where the tech barons have so much money and influence that they just buy policy and legislation on a state, local, and national level. We are seeing levels of overt corruption now like we never imagined could happen before, but it's been creeping for decades. I think there is a backlash coming, and a huge one. These tech companies think they can operate with total impunity because they can buy everything and everyone. That only works up to a certain point, then you get a whole new crop of elected officials running on an anti-AI, anti job losses, anti data center, tax the billionaires platform. It's coming, and soon I think...

[Martin Potter]

Disclaimer -- Off Topic !

only one more UK public holiday here until Xmas!

You might consider moving to Canada, as we have 6 holidays between now and Xmas.
(Fathers' Day, Canada Day, Civic Holiday, Labour Day, Thanksgiving, Remembrance Day.)

[Martin Ice Web]

I came to see if there was an update...first my visibility surged, now dropped through the floor. I knew something had to be up. This time I did not get any traffic bump or increase in inquiries at the beginning as I normally do.

The bump was 2 days ahead. Do not trust google with any announcements!

So far the worst update ever. Worse then panda and penguin together!
With all the updates this year we are down to 30%. And ALL of the remaining traffic is rubbish.

Serps are full of cheap made websites (never seen before) with terrible UI and copied manufacturer descriptions. What the heck?

[Micha]

So far, this update has been a real joke: The store is generating almost no revenue from Google traffic anymore, Google ads are falling flat and basically just burning through money, and the junk in the search results is back. “Discover” on the news page has been scaled back, but suddenly press releases from government agencies are popping up, and the bots are back too.

The funniest thing today: a website where all links from Google lead to 404 pages. But according to Sistrix, it’s suddenly ranking at the very top.

[christianz]

Google ranking IQ is lowest ever, the SERPs are worst ever and everything is getting even worse.

However, I have managed to reduce the AI scraping activity via simple but creative tarpit. They are bogging down crawling endless deterministically random generated garbage and I am even redirecting them to waste bandwidth on AI company sites that they work for. Very satisfying!

My next enhancement will be poisoning the useless trap resources with repetitive wrong information, hopefully poisoning the LLM training corpus. I will also add extra rendering load doing useless rendering with transparency/canvas/animation etc,

There is no SEO downside either, because none of the tarpit entry pages are supposed to be indexed anyway.