The bots are rampant. At one point, I could keep up a little, but now it's impossible. I block everything from China, Singapore, and Brazil, and it doesn't matter. Bots from those countries continue to get through, especially Singapore.

China, Singapore is going crazy. Calmed down late afternoon here.. But insane amounts.

Have you also noticed a significant drop in Google traffic? On a few pages I'm looking at right now, Google traffic has dropped to almost zero for about three hours, whereas before it was actually good.

Sometimes the real world gets in the way. Anyone consider these bot attacks might be deliberate? There's an escalation in tariff wars going on RIGHT NOW and will only get worse by Nov 1.

The positions are all over the place. Normal traffic, good traffic, no traffic.. Heavy ups and downs in the serps.

China/Singa bots are not real, after blocked all IP’s from these countries they are still appearing in GA4. So, at most they are just stats hitters.

Yes they come from Google, even they hit a blocked website traffic is still sent from Google so it count has a view for them

I’ve Geoblock China and Singapore took 3 days to kill all traffic. Maybe I’m out of the bot listing or « black listed » :)

Have you also noticed a significant drop in Google traffic? On a few pages I'm looking at right now, Google traffic has dropped to almost zero for about three hours, whereas before it was actually good.

Yes, my search traffic is -33% this morning and direct traffic is -23%. USA -50%, UK -64%, Germany -41%. Yesterday was also weak, but not like this. Let's hope it's temporary...

my search traffic is -33% this morning and direct traffic is -23%. USA -50%

The number of ChatGPT hits (real time scrapes from user searches) I'm seeing is rising. I wonder if a big part of the loss in Google traffic is because their user base is crumbling?

@BigKat

Google‘s user base is not crumbling. It’s just that about 35% of its users are not moving past AI. That percentage will grow. So, Google has the same number of users; they are just not getting to us (websites) as frequently.

The number of ChatGPT hits (real time scrapes from user searches) I'm seeing is rising. I wonder if a big part of the loss in Google traffic is because their user base is crumbling?

My traffic from Google was very high in September trough about October 3rd or so and has dropped off since and become much less stable. It's not ChatGPT causing such a rapid decline. My traffic from ChatGPT and other AI platforms has grown steadily this entire year though.

More likely the effect of losing about 350 aged links from two high DA sites that went belly up and closed within a week of each other. I'm getting socked in the puss now. My own site's DA has dropped from 42 down to 36 lately. I know many on here think it's a false metric, but I actually find it to be fairly predictive of an increase or decrease in traffic if the DA increases or decreases. When I have had a higher DA the peaks and valleys of traffic seemed to be smoothed out somewhat.

So today I can say that Google News is completely crazy. Completely outdated news in my topic cluster, seems to be problems with updates. Demented traffic on the news site today is terrible. At least the shop is making sales.

Edit:
Google's AI is really rubbish. Today we published an article about a case of fraud, and now when you search for our name, that damn thing claims we're fraudsters because we sell overpriced cell phones to old people. It's slowly becoming less funny what this stupid piece of technology is doing.

@Micha Even for my site it said that it was dangerous because it allowed the download of malicious software, too bad that nothing can be downloaded from my site. Let's now calculate that artificial intelligence for site positioning also works in this way and this explains all the chaos and crap that has happened.

This time of year, leading up to Christmas, is typically the best. Now, it's the worst in terms of revenue, and it is dropping each day. The crazy thing is that my real traffic is steady, but page RPM is dropping daily, and membership sales have stopped. Unbelievable!

What an extremely modest day today. Google has throttled everything again, Discover is dead, News is dead, normal search traffic is useless. So the news site is more dead than alive today. Shop: zero sales via Google traffic, traffic slump, etc. And all the other sites I monitor: exactly the same. If anyone tries to tell me again that this is a coincidence, I'll have the laugh of my life.

We are also facing a heavy spike from china in recent times.

Google is no longer generating any valid, new, genuine business enquiries for our global sites even thoug traffic volumes appear to be normal. Fortunately our repeat order customer base continues at their usual levels as per the past 50 years.

Our UK localised sites are steady for the time of year, they do not serve highly populated areas.

AI Overviews / summaries remain prominent, reducing clicks to content pages.

Years ago when i was receiving inquiries, customer were answering back, now I’m really questioning if they are not bot and they train to send inquiries…

All this AI stuff is going to fast, and I’m sure no one know where it’s going…

Google's AI is now available in Germany, and honestly, I've never seen such technological crap. The thing only delivers English pages and answered 30 questions completely wrong out of 30. So this is supposed to be the future? Humanity is screwed.

BOTS are back!

Years ago when i was receiving inquiries, customer were answering back, now I’m really questioning if they are not bot and they train to send inquiries…

Believe this or not the only "enquiries" I have received in the last 4 weeks have all been the same ... All for one of my .com domain names and all, except for one, at the same offer price.

I now have a standard reply template.

I was thinking how bad Google is, and then I took a look at Bing —it's just as bad, maybe even worse.

I was thinking how bad Google is, and then I took a look at Bing —it's just as bad, maybe even worse.

It seems like google and MS have a secret deal where MS has agreed not to move into search. Otherwise there is no explanation for why they didn't seize the easy opportunity to take huge market share from Google.

Visitor numbers on my news site have fallen to an all-time low this week. Google simply isn't updating the news feed and is only showing articles that are weeks old in my topic. Normal searches are generating virtually no clicks anymore... it's just frustrating, especially because you can see that the only sites that are working are the really big publishers. I'm slowly starting to believe that the internet is finished and that it doesn't matter what we do.

I'm slowly starting to believe that the internet is finished and that it doesn't matter what we do.

Maybe the only truthful thing Google has ever said is the open web is in rapid decline. What Google failed to do is accept responsibility for their own actions that caused this rapid decline. Give it time and history will give Google the credit they deserve for this.

@Micha, i think there was a roll back this week. Traffic has become better in the beginning of the week and then on wednesday it suddenly switch to very bad traffic with lots of bots again.

@martin, but there were no signs of this. According to Semrush and Co, everything is quiet. Something has happened at Discover, but a rollback would look different. I really don't understand what's going on at the moment, but another week and it will be a financial disaster.

Still no realworld business enquiries however a consistent traffic week across all sites with no crazy spikes until today when Ten Cent Could Computing from Singapore decided to perform, like Huawei Singapore, individual url visits on one of my .asia sites from many IP addresses ... Needless to say those IP ranges are now blocked.

We are also facing a heavy spike from china in recent times.
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