I noticed slow indexing issues on March 6th. For my news site, typically, it takes about 2-4 minutes for articles to be indexed, but on that day, it was taking over 10 minutes.

A few weeks ago, I searched for a local service and noticed a website with three listings on the first page of results. However, clicking on any of those entries led to completely blank pages with no HTML or content whatsoever. I initially assumed it was a temporary glitch, but when I checked again today, the same three entries still resulted in empty pages. It almost seems like Google’s algorithms are over-optimizing for overoptimization and inadvertently rewarding sites that lack optimisation or any content.at all lol

Anemic traffic continues, sales down by 85%, ad traffic seems even worse.

What a mess. Sundar Pichai will go down in history as the man who broke Google.

@goodoldweb

Google's AI definitely isn't helpful for shoppers, which is likely driving more shoppers to just go directly to Amazon. As you said, what a mess.

As of today, March 7th, someone turned the switch back on and there was somewhat higher traffic all day, and numerous new inquiries since yesterday. It's not completely back to normal however...USA, Canada, Australia and Germany are all still lower -
The United States
-12%
The United Kingdom
+36%
France
+103%
India
+18%
Germany
-14%
The United Arab Emirates
-8%
Italy
-38%
Canada
-25%
Ireland
+491%
Australia
-26%

Forgot to add in my post above.

Our ebay store is no better. Sales went dead for almost a week now (very unusual for us, we sell live unique products).

I have no doubt ebay Australia is experiencing the same anaemic traffic issues we're experiencing on our website.

What the heck is Google doing at the moment? The shop is still dead, even though Google traffic has increased again. The Merchant Center is also showing “normal” clicks again, the ranking has recovered, but the people coming from Google aren't buying anything. This is not normal and more and more shop owners are complaining about the same situation. It can't be the AI stuff, we don't have that, but the crappy company changed something on Tuesday.

people coming from Google aren't buying anything

Google once was a destination shoppers could find stuff not sold in marketplaces, but now those shoppers are getting spammed by Google with marketplace ads when they do a product search. Google is basically just an aggregator of marketplace products presented as ads. I think what few users that do find us, after sifting through all the ads, are so exhausted they have lost their intent to buy.

The economy in the USA is on shaky ground too, and I wouldn't be surprised if Google helps tip the economy into recession from jobs being lost to AI Overviews consuming publisher's traffic and the ad spam that limits choice for shoppers beyond what's already sold in well-known marketplaces.

@RubicCubed

The world allowed Google to sell ads on it's very own search engine while installing their Android OS on more then half the devices on this planet. This is like letting the big fat greedy cat watch the milk. What did we think would happen? Many of us (me included) have noticed that early and have been warning about what Google are doing for more than 15 years now.

What we have now is Google actively filtering buy intent searches and redirect users to thier ads, and more ads and more ads, have them click paid ads a million times before showing them what they are looking for.

Now more than ever, Google must be broken. Search should not be run by the same company selling ads. We are beyond being fair. What we have now is blatent theft. Both merchants and consumers are paying the price, being taken for a ride under the false pretence of a "search engine" and "orgnising the worlds information". This hurts competition and obstruct trade big time.

@goodoldweb

Go back even further to the invent of the internet, which began with the US military. Many years later Google received US government grants for mass surveillance. I don't think the US government will break Google up, because US government helped build this monster. Instead I believe the US government will allow Google to use their dominance in search to replicate that dominance in AI globally to extend beyond the digital world and into every aspect of our lives. I believe this because Google recently changed their AI ethics policy to permit use for surveillance and weapons. Last week the US DOJ also dropped their efforts to make Google divest their investment in the competing AI company Anthropic. Larry Page just started an AI company, with a focus on manufacturing, called Dynatomics. Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who owns the White Stork military drone company, also helped author a "Superintelligence Strategy" which we all should take the hour or so to read [webmasterworld.com...] to get into the minds of those who are crafting AI policy that will shape every aspect of society. Who knows, maybe Google's pursuits in becoming an AI superpower will make some countries think twice about blocking Google entirely, for their own national security reasons.

For all intensive purposes Google search is dead for us. This weekend has been the worst I've seen in decades and is unsustainable to have any expectation our business will survive in its current form. Selling products, I think we have no choice but to go back onto Amazon but with large across the board price increases to accommodate the costs/headaches associated with that place. What other choice do we have since we're not being seen in Google, getting very little traffic, moving very little product and have the expectation this will get even worse in the very near future?

For all intensive purposes Google search is dead for us. This weekend has been the worst I've seen in decades and is unsustainable to have any expectation our business will survive in its current form. Selling products, I think we have no choice but to go back onto Amazon but with large across the board price increases to accommodate the costs/headaches associated with that place. What other choice do we have since we're not being seen in Google, getting very little traffic, moving very little product and have the expectation this will get even worse in the very near future?

Here is what I am seeing as the major loss in traffic on my site:

#1 - Google has stopped referring traffic to all my informational articles. Traffic is down by more than half for all of them. This is due to AI Overviews

#2 - The categories on my site that Google interprets as being primarily informational and not ecommerce/product have all declined considerably. That is also due to the increase in AIO, and the addition of more and more AIO links and widgets on the page.

One concrete example is "Architectural Photography". Google has added so much AI content at top of page, plus wiki, and the highest DA sites with articles about this topic. If you are selling physical products, which is also "architectural photography", or if you are providing "architectural photography" services then you are now dead in the water...unless you are one of the photographers now listed right at the top of the page as examples of architectural photographers.

I expect this to repeat across many of my categories as AOI is clearly being used to push out all organic links. Google is converting to an AI informational platform completely without any organic links.

Final point - the public likes this transition as it is much faster to find answers this way. We are holding on to an old, outmoded platform that we benefited from. Nobody who uses Google cares about this like we do. It is never going back and will only get worse. So Google traffic is going to decrease a lot from here, and there really is no remedy except for somehow getting your brand mentioned high up in the AIO snippits, which is very hard.

I personally cannot use Amazon nor many other platforms due to what I sell. I am literally planning for the end of my current career and to just work on my investments and nest egg. I am one of the fortunate ones, I made a lot of money over the last 20 years and can retire without continuing with my website, Google, or even working anymore. I'm just riding it out to the end. I really do hope that new horizons open up for younger people, as my generation (I am in my early 50s) could hitch our wagons to the internet / search wagon and make a very good living. Now? We are in a new world of monopolies where nobody will prosper other than those at the top of these monopolies or associated with them. The current admin is actively working to strengthen those monopolies every day, and has gotten rid of most of the actions / investigations against them. This is corporate rent seeking...pay off the leader and keep your monopoly. It is just that simple.

Final point - the public likes this transition as it is much faster to find answers this way. We are holding on to an old, outmoded platform that we benefited from.

The public isn't always looking for mere answers. Sometimes people are looking for Web sites on a given topic. That's why, if Google doesn't want to let a future competitor kidnap its cash cow, it should--at the very least--have a "Web" tab along with its existing tabs for images, videos, news, etc.

The public isn't always looking for mere answers. Sometimes people are looking for Web sites on a given topic. That's why, if Google doesn't want to let a future competitor kidnap its cash cow, it should--at the very least--have a "Web" tab along with its existing tabs for images, videos, news, etc.

What percentage of the average user base is specifically looking for a website? 10%? 20%? For services and products maybe, but not that many for answers to most questions. I have heard people glowing about the new AIO results...for the most part they love it. Sure Google can add a tab, but it will never be like the old days...people are being trained to receive information in a new and more efficient way.

The way I see it, if you are selling something that people will patiently search for and compare sources (because it's a high-value item) then you will probably continue to get targeted traffic and sales from Google. My traffic is going down since Feb, but sales inquiries are better than last year by far.

If you are a purveyor of content and depend on Adsense or referral revenue from your site for a living, then your days are truly numbered, and few. The only exceptions might be very authoritative sites that are organizations, but smaller independently owned sites trying to compete with their content are not going to be around for much longer

AI will need to source its data and update it's knowledge base from somewhere. Once small websites disappear, togther with their expertise and knowledge AI will find it hard to provide fresh news and data.

What webites are they are going to crawl once more then half the internet closes shop?

Nah, it's an echo system. AI's (playing the search engines or not) must provide websites a reason to stay afloat and produce fresh content and news.

The only thing i'm worried about is that one company owns 95% of the search market while selling ads directly on the same pages they own.

Seriously, you constantly hear “users want this, users want that” ... Nobody, not even Google, knows exactly what the user wants, you can only guess. There are enough voices against this AI nonsense that say they don't want it, but Google is forcing it on them. However, there are a lot of users who don't care, but nobody knows whether they like it or not. If Google offered an “Ai search” tab and a “Web search” tab, I'd be willing to bet that most people would use “Web”. Precisely because it is a search engine and not an answer engine.

The only thing i'm worried about is that one company owns 95% of the search market while selling ads directly on the same pages they own.

Will there even be a search market in a year or two, that actually sends traffic to websites, or will it become a chat bot market? At the rate things are progressing, or shall I say eroding, websites will soon become relics of the past.

Traffic for our site is OK! Could be much better.
2 out of 10 visitors engage with our site and fetch multiple sites. 8 users fetch on site and leave ( these are no bots, but mismatched query/results from g )
Looking one year back it was vice versa.
It all began with watherver update on 6 January. Since it was going down with interrupts of one or two weeks with good traffic.

Our niche looks like:
1-4 same old big resellers ( matched with query )
5- ##### completly mismatched ( on purpose ) websites

But ads are precise like a laser guided rocket.

Will there even be a search market in a year or two, that actually sends traffic to websites, or will it become a chat bot market? At the rate things are progressing, or shall I say eroding, websites will soon become relics of the past.

AI or not, people will still need to shop for products online, book services, fill up applications, subscribe to info services, etc. For this they will still need websites.

Furthermore, AI's will need to source thier fresh data and news from somewhere, they will need constant (quality) content websites OR appear dumb and outdated.

Yes made for adsense websites may be out the door but quality content and shopping/booking sites are not going anywhere soon.

It's too early to loose hope IMO.

Yes made for adsense websites may be out the door but quality content and shopping/booking sites are not going anywhere soon.

The challenge (for users) will be how to find those Web sites. Maybe Webcrawler (yes, it's still around) will have a second wind!

What percentage of the average user base is specifically looking for a website? 10%? 20%?

Google reportedly handles more than 5 trillion searches per year. Ten to 20 percent of 5+ trillion isn't a number to be sneezed at.

Some good news: Trump Justice Dept. reaffirms Biden-era proposal to break up Google.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/03/07/google-doj-chrome-anthropic-break-up/

[edited by: not2easy at 11:32 am (utc) on Mar 12, 2025]
[edit reason] readability [/edit]

Is that good news? Mightn't Chrome (and other browsers based on Chrome's guts) be neglected or run into the ground? Google at least has an incentive to maintain Chrome.

This is probably good news for websites, as it means that Google has less data to use for ranking. Besides, it can't hurt to break Google's market power in the browser sector.

Is that good news? Mightn't Chrome (and other browsers based on Chrome's guts) be neglected or run into the ground? Google at least has an incentive to maintain Chrome.

Letting the fat greedy cat watch the milk is never a good idea.

Google stronghold on the search market started by getting users to install the Google search (spy) bar, chrom was part two in their plan for total web control.

Removing chrom will put a major dent. The question i am asking is how soon? They've been abusing thier power for far too long.

We got under attack from bots last night. This usualy happens when google plays around with serps. So, we have a traffic dump from about -40% today.

@Martin Ice Web Copycats ;-). We were attacked all day yesterday, it only stopped this morning. However, traffic is currently normal (bad)

Yes it stopped early in der morning and just right now it has started again.

Someone any idea how to prevent openAI from crawling?

OpenAI Crawlers and Bots: [webmasterworld.com...]

Traffic sucks BIG time today without any sign of SERP volatility !

@not2easy: thanx. but the crawlers do not pay attention to robots.txt.
Even .htaccess rewrite to NC does not help
and my IP blocking list has become enormous dimensions.