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]

[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.

[Chris travel 30]

I started using Ecosia-Search today as I feel Google Search more and more useless for what I am researching. And honestly: It feels so good to see real websites again. There are some sponsored snippets and sites above the organic results as well, but it feels so clean and satisfying :D ...

[Martin Ice Web]

I don´t realy get it.
When analyzing the current website in top #10 :
All of them
-do not have canonical tags implemented (or is showing to the current site) even if this site are close product-pages
-they do have copied the manufacturer description 1 on 1
-they do have the manufacuter pictures
-they use AI to inflate the text with nonsense and wrong information

As I know this is all that someone shouldn´t do because it would trigger googles algo to downgrade the ranking.
All the clean websites that focus on real information and giving real information are gone.

[Micha]

It’s honestly getting more absurd by the day. In my niche, there are countless finance websites giving very questionable advice while not even using canonical tags or other basic SEO techniques recommended by Google. Cheap AI translations are everywhere now as well. And on top of that, broken websites are becoming more common too. I’ve never landed on so many non-functioning websites through Google as I do now.

[RedBar]

Traffic well-up at the moment thanks to The Netherlands outperforming the USA. Yes we supply the NL but not usually with this volume and it's not for a specified project since it is across all widgets.

My US SERPs display 90+% localised results with the occasional, maybe 1:20, major export producer. In one way this is good for me since that producer is usually me however, there has to be an however, I am not getting much traffic from these rankings BUT, most notably, the AI result in many cases IS my information with a link to my site however the volume of click-thrus are so low it may as well not be there.

So, I've done everything correctly, I'm ranking #1 in many cases for the AI result yet derive almost zero traffic ... That's a massive incentive for me to continue isn't it ALL you AI scraping companies?

[Martin Ice Web]

We had 2 days of "good" traffic and this night bahm biggest hit ever.

For me it seems that google is switching between datacenters, because the drop comes within a second.

[Chris travel 30]

Here, it hit a little since monday. I guess the update took some time to kick in. It is not that bad, we are not at zero. But the drop is significant atm. Normally, it comes back when the update is coming to an end. I do follow every guidelines, fully transparent, no unusual quirks on our sites, everything clean, no link buying, all organic - I hope G will appreciate it in the future :D ...

[Fluff_Nutz]

Google will never appreciate websites, despite them being the main fuel in running the WWW. I always see this situation as a football scenario. Whilst players are the main asset, like websites. After all its our content in those LLM AI's. But only one asset wins. It's officially put me completely off soccer/football, as I can never unsee it.

But I know we would all like to wake up from this, as if some kind of big long nightmare. I have only been at this for 2-3yrs and, as it seems, missed out on everything.. Got a small taste when I first started. Money was great, sadly not any more..

As June quickly approaches, I am, once again ending the month where I started. Once AGAIN no growth at all. Despite staying consistent and doing everything that is expected. I even spend hours each day editing and making sure all is good for any potential viewers. I take good stride and effort into this messed up mess. I know I shouldn't but its also passion too, as well as business. But its so tiring.

No company or entity is out there to help, which is wrong. Businesses over here are dying each and every day. Many of which rely on web traffic. I diverse and still cannot escape G's manipulation. Nothing seems to work. I even cater and write for viewers. G just owns too much monopoly that nothing works and no one escapes..

Sucks.. Feels wrong and incredibly frustrating.. I no longer think anything good will come out of this, so I have, now, diversed ONCE AGAIN. This time away from relying on SEO. Who knows it it will work or not but I'm tired boss. I have expectations each month, which is never allowed to be met. Traffic can be great one day and immediately killed the next, why? I'm tired of being stuck at the same traffic each and every month

It's funny as the G CEO mentioned in an article I read recently something.. something... all AI and sites will co-exist. Blah.. blah.. Yea, seeing is believing..

[Chris travel 30]

@Fluff_Nutz seems like we are in the same boat. Passion for what I am doing is what keeps me going. The money still comes in and I can afford a living from it. Feedback from readers keeps me going, and I love what I am doing. But, and I totally agree with you in this, man - I am damn tired. Sometimes it is just too much, to keep up with everything that keeps changing. It feels like every week there is something new. For me, this feeling started since AI is "the big thing".
Personally, I would like to think beyond AI, having an eye on what will be "the next big thing". It's a trend-society. Now the hype is AI, next might be quantum computing, or, as someone here mentioned a while ago, gardening as we will all be unemployed.
Keep your head up and take some off-screen time if you can.

[christianz]

@Chris travel 30

Might as well get in on the gardening bubble early, because AI trend seems to be entering the rug-pull cashout phase with Anthropic and OpenAI exit-scamming with IPOs. SpaceX also calls itself "AI company".

Back on topic - the latest Core Update is bat#*$! bananas crazy. They seem to be ranking based on everything but the actual website or content. I am supposed to believe that AI is useful for business when biggest AI company (Google) itself can't make AI that can spot spam from real content.