June 2026 Google Search Observations

[BigKat]

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.

It demonstrates AI is more hype than anything else. If AI were so great, all the states allowing AI data centers to be built would be using the technology themselves and they're not. I'm sure a lot of politicians are getting rich, along with the AI companies, but that's about it at this point.

[edited by: not2easy at 11:46 am (utc) on Jun 3, 2026]
[edit reason] New month, new thread [/edit]

[Fluff_Nutz]

I knew something was up. Always happens when traffic is on a high. Urgh,, Google and your useless ''updates''. But, though likely wrong here.. I would like to think that this new annoyance is just a late announcement as traffic was already a mess before it.. Who knows any more?

[RedBar]

A huge drop in traffic to my global site yesterday and so far today.

[Martin Ice Web]

It is called SPAM Update - means more SPAM in results less quality.

[Chris travel 30]

It looks weird to me: The traffic is jumping back and forth. 20 minutes good traffic from G, 20 minutes almost nothing. what the he.. are they doing?

[Micha]

The news site is performing a bit stronger in Discover again today, but other than that: more spam, significantly more spam. The shop is experiencing exactly what Chris just wrote. But we are only at the beginning of the spam-boosting update, so a lot could still change.

[Fluff_Nutz]

Yesterday continues these terrible drops, now -20% compared to same day last week. Revenue was managing to successfully keep up with last month. With better RPM rates. Now its dropping to -2% compared to last month. Meaning, both traffic and revenue are now down in comparison. Instead of just one metric. Thank you Google and Singaporean bots! Well done!

The future is looking terrible the more I think on it. With zero click garbage and yet our content must still be needed as it, still, appears in the AIO. With no growth allowed. On top of that tons of ''updates'', what feels like more than normal and each one taking chunks of traffic and never returning it. It's all very volatile and one sided. How is any of this allowed? Websites will not survive as there is barely anything to survive on. I'm not sure even Newsletters work and I doubt it will bring much traffic in. You would need a big stable and active subscription list, which only the big sites might have. As they had time to grow one. Meaning smaller sites (like myself) have no chance. On top of that, paywalls won't work if 90% of traffic are bots. How can bots pay for viewing pleasures?
ON TOP OF THAT... A lot of social media platforms do not allow for links to personal websites. They see it as self promotion (which it is) and will often get flagged.. This is also a poor way to gain traffic. After all of that I am, also, out of ideas.. This is terrible management..

In other news, more people have left Google for AI rivals.. Is this a sign of Google having no idea what they are doing? It certainly feels like it. That is at least 4 key players in the space of a very short time period

[Martin Ice Web]

Very big drop since yesterday. (-80%). We do NOT SPAM.
Beside that our rankings improved significantly (using VPN). But traffic comes in surges. 1 hour nothing only bots. Next hour normal traffic.
We see traffic to 1 page from 10 different IPs within 2 seconds.

And pages that have a canonical link to a aggregate page are back in index.
GSC showed them as not in index with correct canonical page.
If google uses all pages and ignores canoncial tag for the SPAM Update then i do not wonder why we lost traffic.
We do have alot of similar pages due to color and length for our items.

Sales sales are a little up. Our amazon sales are highest ever.

[Micha]

Sales are indeed impressive, particularly given my sector and the current temperatures. The news site is also seeing good traffic via Discover, and rankings remain stable. However holy... spam is skyrocketing, the headlines are flooded with rubbish, and very strange websites are starting to surface in the organic search results.

The funny thing is, Google allegedly hates top lists where sites rank themselves at number one. Yet, I’m seeing an increasing number of these lists ranking well at the moment. Go figure

[RedBar]

spam is skyrocketing

MSFT bots are all over my sites generating tens of thousands of 403s ... They achieve absolutely nothing therefore why bother?

[Micha]

The rollout is complete

[status.search.google.com ]

[RedBar]

The rollout is complete

Wow, I must have a 33 year old spam site, traffic down 70% today ... hmmm

[Chris travel 30]

Not sure if the heatwave in Europe is making my readers lazy to buy stuff/book their holidays, or if it`s just google.

Traffic was down the last days, lets see how the weekend goes.

[RedBar]

Bear with me, a tale of two sites this morning after 12 hours.

!. The hotel venue ... This is our biggest gig of the year, way bigger than Xmas or Easter. Two full days of mostly live bands etc, 10 in all with Sunday being a massive charity fund raiser, thousands taking part, contributing and assisting for free and it's hot. Looking forward to it.

2. Global site after 12 hours at 10% BUT orders and enquiries from well-established customers coming in as normal.

Is it only AI bots that are interested in our sites to give Joe Public their instant AI answers?

1st July I am launching an experimental AEO site purely to see what happens. No, it has not been written by AI however I have studied what AI "seems" to favour.

[Chris travel 30]

To be honest: they can't tell me the "update" is over. I really do not believe any word they say any more. It feels like the SERPs are shuffling every 2 hours or so: in one moment, traffic spikes over the top, next it's basically dead. Sorry guys, that's just manipulation if you ask me. And again, I am reaching a point of pure anger about this company that keeps the web in a stranglehold.

[RubicCubed]

I see the same shuffling as Chris. Considering Google has lied to us many times before, I don't see any reason to think they aren't lying again. Anyway quality pages should be pinned at the top and this shuffling is just more evidence Google isn't concerned about quality.

[Micha]

There's still quite a bit of movement, although the official completion of the spam update doesn't mean rankings stop changing altogether. Football dominates my niche anyway, but my news site seems to be stabilizing again, including Discover and Google News traffic. That said, I'm still seeing a lot of spam sites showing up there, so from my perspective, this update hasn't been particularly successful. The shop is performing surprisingly well. I expected the weather alone to cause a significant drop in orders, but the last two days have actually been surprisingly strong.

One thing I've noticed is that several websites I monitor have lost a massive amount of visibility following the spam update. I honestly didn't expect that. Overall, it's been a few days of a Google rollercoaster that felt completely pointless, because spam hasn't really decreased at all.

[RedBar]

Needless to say the hotel venue site's traffic is crushing all the other sites combined today and we still have six hours to go!

Insofar as my global site is concerned I have been preparing multiple 301s from it to my new AEO site scheduled for 1st July. Interestingly those clients who have seen the new site say they prefer it for one overwhelming reason, the existing site has so much information and options that it was too much ... oh wow ... so much is too much = spoilt for choice ?

[goodoldweb]

Interesting how these "updates" are almost always followed by tighter email rules and spam filters.

We use our own domain's SMTP server for email, and immediately after this update our messages suddenly started landing in Gmail spam folders. We have SPF, DKIM, and DMARC configured correctly, and our domain passes every blacklist, email security, and DNS verification test we've thrown at it. Yet Google still decides our emails belong in spam.

It's incredibly frustrating. Not only has organic traffic to our website taken a hit over the years, but now we can't even reliably communicate with our own customers. More and more, it feels like the only way to get your emails delivered is to use Gmail, and the only way to get meaningful traffic to your business is to pay for Google Ads. Everything else seems to be an uphill battle.

Google will no doubt say it's all about fighting spam and protecting users, but from the perspective of small businesses it increasingly feels like that's become a convenient excuse to steer people toward their own ecosystem. If you want reliable email delivery, use Gmail. If you want visibility, pay for Google Ads. Whether that's the intention or not, that's certainly how it comes across.

And if that really is the direction things are heading, it completely undermines the idea of an open internet. The internet was built on open standards where anyone could host a website, run their own mail server, and compete on equal terms. When a handful of dominant platforms effectively become the gatekeepers of who gets seen and whose emails get delivered, that principle starts to erode.

Yes, I understand that because we're on shared hosting there's always a chance another site on the same IP has been sending spam. But penalising every legitimate website on that IP because of one or two bad actor(s)? Seriously? That's the definition of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

How lovely.

[samwest]

We still doin' this? LOL

33 years Red?
That had to be 2400 baud dial-up days.

[RedBar]

That had to be 2400 baud dial-up days.

Yep and using Windows 3.1 ... Optimising images was my biggest challenge!

[RubicCubed]

We use our own domain's SMTP server for email, and immediately after this update our messages suddenly started landing in Gmail spam folders. We have SPF, DKIM, and DMARC configured correctly, and our domain passes every blacklist, email security, and DNS verification test we've thrown at it. Yet Google still decides our emails belong in spam.

It's a big waste of time dealing with people who call and say they placed an order but never got an email confirmation. Or customers who don't receive their tracking email and call asking when their order will ship when it was delivered earlier in the day. IMO Google does this to make us independent shops look inept and bog us down with time wasting activities that attempt to distract us from the ever declining search traffic they are sending. Most of our customers checkout as a guest. When Google gets crazy on the filters, we put a notice on our checkout page that Gmail is not being accepted at this time until Google corrects their problem. They keyword being "their problem" because like you said everything can be configured properly on our side, with a dedicated good reputation IP address, and nothing get through.

[RedBar]

@goodoldweb & RubicCubed

I've suffered the exact same problem after moving from Plesk to CPanel . I'm going back to Plesk in the early Autumn since I really do not like CPanel whatsoever.

[Martin Ice Web]

This was an Anti-Anti-SPAM-Update. Complete clean site. Lost 90% and SPAM is still in index.

[BigKat]

Regarding the email issue we stores are having with Gmail, keep in mind what Google has done to search - basically forcing us to pay to be seen. Google may eventually do the same with email by offering a paid subscription to increase the odds our emails land in their user's inboxes. Google has made a fortune acting as a wedge between users and information/products/services, so don't be shocked if they monetize their monopoly in other ways to extract more money out of the market.

Instead of outright blocking Gmail, and potentially losing the sale, one could force an email confirmation before the order is accepted. In that email also explain the reason why Gmail and other free email providers block legitimate email and that's so their own marketing emails have less competition in the inbox. Also suggest your customers whitelist your domain in Gmail, although that doesn't always work either.

[RedBar]

If I remember correctly it's not just GMail but also AOL, BTInternet, iCloud, TalkTalk and Yahoo.

[samwest]

This was an Anti-Anti-SPAM-Update.

Like double secret probation....again.
Google's been playing by Faber College rules for years.
[youtu.be...]

[Chris travel 30]

@Martin, it's exactly like that. 100 % clean, first hand content on our travel site, got kicked in the *ss by the so called "spam Update". Why don't they name it as it is? Does Spam Upgrade not sound good enough?

[Micha]

I don't get what you guys are complaining about. Don't you want to display bets from all those wonderful gambling sites Google is currently pushing? And honestly, all those Arabic websites spinning cheap AI content into German and ranking incredibly well are super informative, right? ;) Okay, jokes aside: calling this a 'spam update' is just taking users for a ride. Plus, there's still a massive amount of movement. My news site took a heavy dive in Sistrix today, just like tons of other websites I monitor. While Google News and Discover are back up and working, the regular index is completely useless right now.

[goodoldweb]

Instead of outright blocking Gmail, and potentially losing the sale, one could force an email confirmation before the order is accepted. In that email also explain the reason why Gmail and other free email providers block legitimate email and that's so their own marketing emails have less competition in the inbox. Also suggest your customers whitelist your domain in Gmail, although that doesn't always work either.

I agree. Google has pushed the boundaries for too long. We're now being actively limited in our ability to communicate directly with our customers, and that's wrong on many levels. In response, we're discouraging the use of Gmail and clearly informing customers about the limitations and risks involved.

[goodoldweb]

If I remember correctly it's not just GMail but also AOL, BTInternet, iCloud, TalkTalk and Yahoo.

It’s only Gmail that has been causing issues recently. Emails to Microsoft and Yahoo addresses are delivered without any problems, and customers respond as expected. The issue seems to be limited to Gmail, where our order confirmations and tracking notification emails seem to disappear into a Google black hole, leaving customers unaware that the emails were ever sent.

[Martin Ice Web]

So far we are sitting at 40% of normal traffic. Will not get to 50% though.
This update was worse than panda and penguin together.
Our vertical is full of big marketplaces (mediamarkt, otto) and manufactures where customers canīt buy from.
Most of our competitors have been hit very hard.

What we figured out is that this ANTI-ANTI-SPAM UPdate aimed at duplicate content caused by copied manufacturer descriptions.
Not certain sites have been hit but it was a domain downgrade.
Winners are big marketplaces, amazon, ebay and price compare engines.

So this was not a ANTI-ANTI-SPAM Update but a big upside down shuffle camouflaged as an SPAM-Update with the goal to reduce the choices users can buy from but clicking on google ads.

What we are seeing since beginning of the year is that google constantly reduces the quality of serps and reduces choices by removing high quality websites from serps.


observations:
-There are double or more entries ( same site, same URL) within #1 - #10.
-Bots from Lithuania are going crazy.
-traffic comes in surges

[RedBar]

@MIW

-Bots from Lithuania are going crazy.

Have you had the Andorra, Bulgaria and Netherlands bots yet?

[Martin Ice Web]

@RedBar,

bulgaria is rising.

I am thinking of giving the bots something to eat that they canīt swallow. Like a very stupid mixed 10.000 word text.

[Chris travel 30]

@Martin, the domain downgrade was my first impression as well

[Fluff_Nutz]

This month seemed promising at one point. But, perhaps, as expected by now. With today being the last day of the month. The site ends, ONCE AGAIN, with no growth at all to either traffic or revenue.. Talk about a caged beast. Sad thing is my team continue to be consistent and I know if we were allowed growth, we would be doing exceptionally well right now..

On top of that as these ''updates'' do not end and are, essentially, 24/7 now.. Making growth even harder. I always wondered when that would kick in.. Visibility keeps dropping too, as a result..

These data centers and AI are incredibly costly. Not even necessary but we live in a corporate world and are mere slaves to such.. Thought slave labour was abolished? Obviously, not.. But I fear that this manipulation will never end as, we know these ''updates'' only ever benefit Google's profits and not, as they say, to improve search. As it rarely ever does.. Long story short this manipulation is most likely to fund their AI and, climate negative, data centers. It could end when these centers are all up and running but they will, likely, always want to create more..

Google cannot create money without destroying something else in the process.. We should all die from hunger, poverty. Let the higher ups deal with themselves. No more slave work and see how long the world lasts.. Idiots..

[RedBar]

@MIW

I am thinking of giving the bots something to eat that they canīt swallow. Like a very stupid mixed 10.000 word text.

I did the opposite ! I removed all my custom error pages and let CPanel display their Unauthorised, Not Found etc pages which now generate hardly any data usage whatsoever.

[Martin Ice Web]

@RedBar,

i have that done too.
But i think of rising the cost for those bot-farms. They have to process the information and this costs money.
The more nonsens these bot become to eat the more the costs will rising.
Think of millions of pages with stupid sentences and misinformation.

[RedBar]

@MIW
Ah, however I don't believe these specific bots are scraping / harvesting information, mine are mostly WordPress vulnerability attacks including email login attempts.

I would have thought that by now someone / something would have realised I don't use WordPress. Yeah, I know it's all automated however surely someone, somewhere is paying for something to do this?