August 2026 Google Search Observations

[RedBar]

That's it, I've had enough of all this MSFT brute force php garbage. It's the start of a new month and MSFT has unsuccessfully attempted thousand of PVs, over 1K per site ... I am closing all my sites but two plus a couple of clients.

BTW, some were from new MSFT IPs I've not seen before.

[edited by: not2easy at 4:03 pm (utc) on Aug 1, 2026]
[edit reason] New month, new thread [/edit]

[christianz]

Wow, the tech mafia are going for it like I've never seen before ... Yesterday an average of 5+K pages per site with today already at 3+K per site ... No one else?

I wish I only had 5k scrape requests per day...

And here we go: Google has rolled out a spam update. As usual, let’s hope for less spam, but we’ll probably end up with more again ;)

Not probably. 100% guaranteed there will be more spam after this update is done, just like after previous spam updates. Also let's remember that the biggest source of spam and slop is google themselves.

[RedBar]

I wish I only had 5k scrape requests per day...

These are solely MS Azure brute force WordPress .php attempts on each site none of which has a WP template nor any .php files.

[gatormark]

@RedBar

Wow, the tech mafia are going for it like I've never seen before ... Yesterday an average of 5+K pages per site with today already at 3+K per site ... No one else?

5+K pages per site is darn good! What are your CloudFlare security settings? I block China and Russia. I challenge EVERYTHING from Singapore. For users, I have certain trusted countries that I allow access without a challenge. Everyone else gets challenged. I also use the Cloudflare Managed Ruleset and a page-per-minute rule.

[Martin Ice Web]

OK this Anti-Anti Spam Update is not looking so good. All the niche sites that are strong focused have been replaced by big resellers ( germany: obi, Bauhaus, expert )
This are sites that are not known for our niche. They do not have additional information rather then the manufacturer description.

i don´t get it. if i am looking for a (used) car i don´t want to see big groceries resellers that do sell that cars as a side job. I want an expert site, a site where i know the owner has deep knowledge.

[morpheus83]

And finally an update is rolling out - [x.com...]

and yes, traffic is in the toilet. Discover / News all gone.

[RedBar]

@gatormark

What are your CloudFlare security settings?

Zero, I do not use it. I tried it on a few sites but after a couple of days realised I didn't have the patience nor time to learn and use it plus it was a challenge for me to find a much simpler and less-costly solution.

In this I have succeeded, what I am now experimenting with are various methods of stopping the generation of these plain 400 error pages. I removed all my customised error pages which obviously saved loads of bandwidth.

Just why MSFT cannot / will not sort out this issue includes themselves into the tech mafia scheme.

[RubicCubed]

And finally an update is rolling out

I just don't see the point of these updates. Organic is buried deep beneath the fold and are viewed by few. These days ranking at the top brings in about the same traffic as ranking at the bottom. Are these updates just meant to take the attention off of Google taking our content and traffic? Or are the workers inside Google search releasing updates to justify their roles within the company and remaining on the payroll? I would think those jobs in organic search will soon be axed because their work on algos is about as relevant as our sites.

[Micha]

Fuc**** scrapers. Last night we got hit by another Azure wave. It was manageable at first, but overnight they launched a massive scraping attack that completely brought the site to its knees. Still, this is just getting incredibly annoying.

[morpheus83]

I just do not understand how the rise in scrapers and bots is directly linked to an update.

We are also seeing a good amount of bots from Japan and India.

[Chris travel 30]

same here. bots, scrapers, crawler are on sky-high level in the last two days. By now, i have not made any attempts to stop them, but i may have to think about it in the future.

[Micha]

The update is done. It went pretty fast again...
[status.search.google.com ]