If the word of people, including those that created AI, are worried about the damage it can do in the long run. If these words are indeed true. Then why do we have AI? At all? If they seriously mean what they say with their so-called ''worry'' then it should be banned. Otherwise its hypocrisy. Alas, I don't see much of anything good coming. Greed blinds even the mightiest of us all. So it will likely hang around whilst its seen as a viable profit maker.

Whilst I'm thankfully not seeing too much of a dent being made into the site. Though I don't rely on Google any more anyway. My traffic comes from other sources. I have, however, noticed a huge drop on my Youtube channel. I was getting 30-50 views per video. Which is bad in itself for how old the channel is. Lack of constancy so my fault. But now I cannot get past 10 views. So whatever this ''update'' is doing its seems to be impacting Youtube

Myself, and others I have spoken with, have seen that from time to time our traffic numbers on Youtube can be flying. Giving us some nice steady growth. Then an invisible wall appears and traffic is just dead. Complete flatline. I found it suspicious at first. Maybe it was my fault? Competition? Lack of interest? However, when others also see this negative impact it becomes more of an issue. Kept an eye on traffic this time around. To no surprise the wall hit slap bang the same day this ''update'' was announced. So annoying.

When traffic comes to a halt like it has on my Youtube channel I never know if I should continue posting or not. It just leaves me confused and a huge lack of motivation. I'm not even sure the content will even pick up later in its life.

30-50 views on YouTube videos is absolutely nothing. I have very few YT subscribers and I am getting 150-2000 views on my shorts. I do have all of them embedded on my website though, so that helps. Posting on YouTube is very hit or miss. You really need to post at the right time and with the correct caption and opening image. And let's face it, most videos are not that interesting. I don't expect a lot of attention as it's all shot with my phone and slapped up quickly. I don't have hours every day to produce YouTube content. So I don't expect to attract tons of subscribers, but it does help to document my products very well

I am ashamed to admit it. I have over 4,000+ videos on my Youtube channel, across the span of 10+yrs. Keep in mind I was not taking it seriously and consistency is a huge problem. Throughout that time I never, once, tried to promote my content. At all. I regret it a lot. Each and every day actually. Had I known what I know now back then I might have been in a much better position.

But yes, I do agree with you. Marketing and promoting is incredibly important. Life lesson as far as I am concerned. My videos now get blasted on to the site and across the kitchen sink. Soon the whole world will know of my content MUWHAHAHA!

indexing issues, anyone? Console says URL is unknown and does not index it for three hours.

Big traffic drops yesterday and today...my search was -8% and direct was -34% yesterday. Today also starting lower, although it's early. I'm losing top ranking terms on desktop as well.

Question...some years back Google announced that it would ignore nofollow tags on links if I remember correctly. Does that mean that it is worthwhile to pursue nofollwed links these days? I understand "for the traffic" yadda yadda...I am talking about a boost in ranking from accumulating a good number (hundreds or thousands possibly) of nofollowed links from a very high authority site. Does anyone have recent experience with this? I normally don't waste much time with nofollowed links.

@ichthyous The short answer is yes; nofollow links can have value, but not in the way dofollow links do.

The longer answer: Google clarified in 2019 that it treats nofollow, ugc, and sponsored attributes as hints rather than absolute directives. This means nofollow links from high-authority sites might pass some ranking signals, though likely not as much as dofollow links.

However, the real value of nofollow links often comes from referral traffic, brand exposure, and possible secondary link opportunities (e.g., someone finds your content through a nofollowed link and later links to it naturally).

If you can get hundreds or thousands of nofollow links from a high-authority site, it could be beneficial, but it won't replace the value of a strong dofollow link profile. It’s a nice bonus, not a core ranking strategy.

Anyone got customers reporting funny actions done to them on chrome while trying to convert?

Not sure, unless you mean scary things like this?:
[seroundtable.com...]

......beyond sick.

Although I suspect some weird things also, but can not put my finger on it....unless a customer informs me directly.

BIG drop in USA traffic today...it's almost noon and -44%. Canada has also been extremely low...today it's -58%. I am wondering if part of this is that Canadians no longer are visiting US businesses, but the downtrend in CA traffic has been worsening since 2024. UAE has also been low lately, but it's Ramadan so not surprising.

The shop: More and more visitors every day, but the conventions have been at 0 since Saturday. February was already a disaster, March is already significantly worse.
News site: The ranking has collapsed here, finance sites currently seem to be very popular on Google, because even with my main keywords, such sites are displayed in first place.
So it's as expected, the update is once again hitting small websites hard.

From Google search console you are noticing an increase in pages in the "Detected section, but not currently index ed"?

@Conro Yep, for a few weeks now. I've checked all the URLs and they're all indexed.

My articles Indicated on GSC have disappeared completely if I search by url on Google. I saw that it started with old news and pages/tags, but now it is also affecting guides that are unique and original

Are they really not in the index? In other words, have you checked the URLs (including searching directly for the heading itself)?

Yes they are not present, I used site:urlname and urlname, but nothing, sometimes an article appears in its place that has a similar title but talks about something else. Another site of mine has been completely deindexed, but I knew it would be that way because it has affiliate links. Google wants everything for itself

Okay, that's hard. I would test it by simply removing the affiliate links from an article and triggering the indexing to see if it works. Unfortunately, Google seems to act arbitrarily, so it's hard to give a precise tip.

I just looked at semrush and all the sites I checked, even those that I thought were untouchable by now are losing keywords and traffic. By now the Google serps have become "empty", It's been a long time and I still don't give myself a logical explanation for all this, at least Bing has preserved its purpose as an index, but Google now ranks sites at random

The update just kicked in. -60% so far.

Have you also noticed an increase in very old articles in Google News? My Discover feed is now full of articles that are over 4 weeks old and Google News also has months-old articles at the top.

As Google rolls out its first core update of 2025, I wonder - has anyone ever (or at least in the past couple of years) experienced an increase in traffic, improved traffic relevance, improved conversions or higher user engagement as a result of a core update? Or are these updates primarily aimed at maximizing Google's advertising revenue rather than enhancing search result relevance?

I used to read of Google ''updates'' giving people traffic and revenue increases all the time, over on Reddit anyway. Now, not so much. Usually its doom and gloom over on Reddit. Just as much as on here. If anyone, other than Google, is benefitting then they are larger sites and being quiet about it. Alas, I have even heard of large sites taking a hit these days. Most recently, LinkedIn.

In the past I have been hit and lost traffic, only when it ended did I get the lost traffic back. But this is not always guaranteed and, for me, its only ever happened once. Most the time its a drop and traffic does not return.

If you keep up to date with it all you will notice a trend going on as to when these ''updates'' occur. Most of the time these drop during months with good RPM. I don't see many ''updates'' dropping during the likes of Janurary and February, when RPM is low. Wonder why? Its obvious really. Also this past weekend was St Patricks day. They also release these annoying and increasingly frustrating ''updates'' during these kind of events. To, once again, capitalize on consumers spending during holidays and increased ad rates.

Plain and simple Google only care about themselves. They are a pure greedy profit machine with no interest in what their viewers want or need. I continue to see empty articles with little information at the top of the SERP. No one wants this. The company are useless and need to move out already!

re: Google wants everything for itself

Funny, yeah... really not funny - See Barry's recent look (SER link below) at the new SERP layout with AI overviews. Almost all links within the AIO simply go back to another Google search page instead of the manufacturer or website (Even though those are the anchor texts).

I clicked on one of the Youtube videos, and it opens in a popup of sorts, the video autoplays (I have autoplay turned off by default), and every link on the popup is either back to a Google search, or directly to their paid product listings.

[seroundtable.com ]

As Google rolls out its first core update of 2025, I wonder - has anyone ever (or at least in the past couple of years) experienced an increase in traffic, improved traffic relevance, improved conversions or higher user engagement as a result of a core update?

We had a significant jump in Google traffic during the November Core Update. Not enough to make up for losses during previous updates and Google's introduction of AI results, though.

Funny, yeah... really not funny - See Barry's recent look (SER link below) at the new SERP layout with AI overviews. Almost all links within the AIO simply go back to another Google search page instead of the manufacturer or website

I prefer that...I think that if people are actually searching for a product or a service they are going to bypass the AIO snippits and continue on to the organic results. I would worry more if those links linked out to my competitors. Having said that...USA traffic has been unusually low recently. The rest of the world is making up for it. I literally just got a large order from South Africa, so I am hoping that if the USD keeps dropping that more foreign customers will emerge again. The high USD has kept them away for years.

As Google rolls out its first core update of 2025, I wonder - has anyone ever (or at least in the past couple of years) experienced an increase in traffic, improved traffic relevance, improved conversions or higher user engagement as a result of a core update?

Yes, but that was long time ago, more than 12 months ago. Since Q4 2024 not a single positive update.

I am seeing armageddon for anything AI, replaced with non AI, but lower quality results.

eg. Babynames sites

Sites that used AI to write longer descriptions are gone.
Sites that list celebrities with a baby name remain, but if you used AI to write a 3 sentence bio fo the celebrity, you are gone.
So arguably, better, more useful sites have been penalised.

I am seeing the same with large directory sites, that use AI to write a short summary of the business after scraping the site content, and then summarising.

Basically, if AI can be detected as unhumanised, its getting a "delete this site" mark, even if its objectively more useful than what now replaces it.

It looks like a business decision by Google.

a. Google does not want to have to index and store AI scaled sites. It's too costly.
b. Why index AI results, when instead, you can make people come to Google, perform the query there, and have the AI result built on the spot for you negating the need for people to go to the website, and instead, they have to use Google, and get more chance of seeing ads?

And how do you explain that more and more websites with clearly AI-generated content can be found at the top of Google's list? Inidatimes is one example, and the number is growing in Germany, too.

Because its AI written, not AI scaled.

I can build a 150k baby names site in a day, by simply running a scraper, finding names, getting AI to write al the content.
I can create a directory the same way, scraping Google maps, then using AI to write descriptions.
AI scaled is hit badly, AI written, less so, especially if the AI written has a small amount of human editing.

In my opinion it's just a coincidence, look at the Google index, most of the sites have nothing to do with the query made. Use Bing with the same query and the difference is huge and obvious to everyone. Google probably wasn't that badly reduced even as soon as it came out in 1998. But in the end it's normal, if you penalize almost all the sites you have to plug the holes in the serp with related topics, not those that answer the query

Basically, if AI can be detected as unhumanised, its getting a "delete this site" mark, even if its objectively more useful than what now replaces it.

If few paragraphs of AI text are supplemental to some other real content then Google must not penalize pages for simply having some words generated by AI. Or they could penalize them for keyword stuffing, which is why that text would most likely be there anyway.

If AI generated paragraphs are the main content, then Google should remove those pages and never index again. Because there is no place for AI generated second order derived "content" in search engine index. It is waste of space.

I keep my sites 100% free of AI generated stuff.