I think were on a loosing streak guys

@redbar,

bad because they are not written in german but in french, spanish, italien.
I don´t know why google is showing this sites in german serps and i think this is a bad user experience.

bad because they are not written in german but in french, spanish, italien.

Definitely not a good experience.

The first week of the year has been very similar to previous years across all sites. The UK hotel site is very quiet which is hardly surprising with the state of the UK economy.

The UAB Baltic Lithuanian bots seem to be attracted to small sites and were all over them a couple of days ago. MSFT continues to be a pita!

The bot spamm is crazy recently. Never had that level of visits !
Human visits are still bad as usual :D

And happy new year !

Not sure if this has been posted here yet: [adexchanger.com ] - The AI Search Reckoning Is Dismantling Open Web Traffic – And Publishers May Never Recover

One interesting trend though is that the number of zero click searches has actually declined recently...it was higher when AIO was first introduced and is now declining. That would imply that people are becoming more familiar with all the AIO content on the page and starting to look past it a bit more than last year.

Still, the numbers are dismal for publishers who used to depend on traffic for a living. The new name of the game for publishers is finding a way to get people to subscribe to your original content and walling it off from AI bots...a very hard transition for most businesses without high level brand recognition and trust. The world has become accustomed to the free everything model over the last 20+ years.

My own traffic is slightly under the traffic this same time last year. The articles seem to be picking up again, and so does traffic from AI sources, which declined rapidly for about 4 months in 2025. None of this is contributing to sales of any kind. Sales are at recession level really. That is despite my typical clientele being wealthier than ever due to their investments appreciating. Maybe because people are not moving as much, not buying and selling homes, and perhaps hoarding savings due to the daily madness coming out of this unhinged administration in DC.

I also think that people across all spectrums feel threatened by job losses...white collar professions are in the crosshairs now as AI advances and companies look to cut labor costs. I was watching the business news and a jobs expert mentioned that 50% of the job postings in marketing had vanished in the last 12 months. Similar numbers for jobs in advertising. There are so many AI tools now which allow you to make complete ad campaigns for web, tv, etc without needing an art director, graphic designer, account rep, video editor, stills photographer, retouching studio...none of it. These jobs will sadly be decimated, and much sooner than we all think.

The articles seem to be picking up again, and so does traffic from AI sources, which declined rapidly for about 4 months in 2025. None of this is contributing to sales of any kind. Sales are at recession level really.

Much of the search traffic we get is from users who have been first run through the ringer with ads, AI and refinement boxes. These users aren't ready to buy anything. If anything they're so exhausted from getting the run around by Google they probably want to smash their monitors, phones and tablets. That's part of the reason why I personally don't use Google and why I suspect most of our orders don't come from Google.

Traffic from AI chatbots is mostly mismatched because of incorrect link sources. A study early last year found 60% of linked sources were wrong, and this hasn't improved much IMO. Our product images in ChatGPT have and still link to other products. Also back in October there was a US Senator who complained ( [blackburn.senate.gov...] ) to Google about their AI accusing her of sexual misconduct by referencing fake sources. She stated "The links lead to error pages and unrelated news articles."

AI in its present form isn't very intelligent as it can't even do something as basic as linking to correct sources. IMO the low quality/mismatched traffic slop we receive closely matches the AI slop produced by these chatbots, which is why the traffic doesn't convert.

Much of the search traffic we get is from users who have been first run through the ringer with ads, AI and refinement boxes. These users aren't ready to buy anything. If anything they're so exhausted from getting the run around by Google they probably want to smash their monitors, phones and tablets. That's part of the reason why I personally don't use Google and why I suspect most of our orders don't come from Google.

Here is what I am seeing, and it's an observation based on 22 years of selling online:
1) The number of new USA inquiries via my website very low for the last quarter (and continuing into January 26). This is most likely due to both AI, number of ads on page, a weak economy, political uncertainty and instability.
2) USA customers are stating that their budgets are 1/10th or 1/20th of the actual price of what they inquire about. This is something new from 2025 and getting worse. It's now about 70% of my inquiries. I have no idea where these clueless people come from or why they seem so disconnected from reality.
3) International sales have vanished because many of my top markets (UK, Canada, Australia) are in recession.
4) International sales have vanished because nobody abroad wants to support American businesses now for obvious reasons
5) Some of what appears to be valid traffic isn't. I had a huge amount of visits from data center locations in Iowa, Virginia, Oregon, and internationally. When you see a 6000% spike in traffic from The Dalles or Council Bluffs that is just AI bot traffic. It's very hard to weed that out without trying to filter all the IP addresses used from these data centers (I don't use GA, and haven't for years).

Traffic from AI chatbots is mostly mismatched because of incorrect link sources. A study early last year found 60% of linked sources were wrong, and this hasn't improved much IMO. Our product images in ChatGPT have and still link to other products.

Yes, the article I posted stated that clickthrough on those links in AIO is 1%. If the links aren't accurate then any traffic is lower than that. I don't even see links in my ChatGPT sessions, they aren't returned at all. I don't use it much though.

Perhaps it will take politicians getting targeted or becoming the target of deepfakes produced by Grok etc before they start to crack down on AI in general. It certainly seems that the route of intellectual property enforcement and copyright infringement may not turn out to rope these AI platforms in as much as initially expected...and especially not with a SCOTUS and an administration that are so openly hostile to copyright protection.

@ichthyous

The economy is definitely a factor across the board for us as well. Even long established businesses we work with are so slow some have shut down temporarily which is an ominous sign of what may be ahead. International sales, at least for us, are hampered by high tariffs and of course the anti-American sentiment that has developed in other countries. I doubt a new administration will be able to change that sentiment without a lot of effort and time. Best case scenario I see is international sales starting to improve in 2029 when a new admin takes over.

We're getting a lot of traffic from legitimate residential IP addresses (breezeline, comcast, sbcglobal, etc) with no referrer sent, in addition to bots. The no referrer visits from common residential IP addresses to our product pages behave just as bots and don't navigate to any other pages. I know some residential IP ranges are rented out to scrapers, but what I'm seeing is different.

As far as incorrect links being cited in AI, it's just another way for these AI engines to train users to not click on the citations and force them to accept whatever answer AI has provided or search more. I don't expect cited sources to improve much, except for individual high profile cases like that Senator, since doing so would lead to less searches and lower ad revenue for the chatbot operators - including those yet to introduce ads.

I don't see politicians cracking down on AI, even if they are deepfaked. Though Musk created the American Party, he reportedly signaled he's going all in to financially support Republican candidates across the USA in 2026. Maybe a souring economy will cause politicians to rethink AI, but even if that happens they will blame it on something else and still do nothing IMO.

Let's not confuse/conflate too many things. AI is a TOOL, just like pen and paper, oil and canvas, hammer and saw. You can't sue TOOLS. But you can sue the CREATORS who USE TOOLS.

Mr. Musk makes tools. He does not make Creators.

Economics plays a much larger role in lack of traffic/converting traffic than anything else. USA Tariffs alone do not create uncertainty, ALL tariffs are PART BUT NOT ALL. This is regards to pricing/quantity/availability.

The USA removal of de minimus postal services (which was HIGHLY abused by EU, Asian and other markets) into the US remains negative 70% which explains shipping from those countries falling off a cliff. This translates to higher shipping costs and thus LOWER SALES or reducing profit margin simply to stay competitive.

Waiting for a new admin (USA) to relax any of the current changes is a long time... and likely to fail in the long run. Much of what has been done will remain in place simply because it makes international economic sense.

As for g search... AI brought in a new can of worms. They haven't quite figured out how to bait the hook for both USERS and CREATORS. At present users are becoming savvy this is not the next neat gizmo and creators are getting the shaft. Both are on the verge of moving on to something else.*

^{* (HINT: Venture Capital: NOW is the time to back the Next Big Thing!)}

Let's not confuse/conflate too many things. AI is a TOOL, just like pen and paper, oil and canvas, hammer and saw. You can't sue TOOLS. But you can sue the CREATORS who USE TOOLS.

Mr. Musk makes tools. He does not make Creators.

This is actually wrong. You absolutely can sue these platforms and they are already being widely sued. Anthropic was the subject of a suit and had to pay billions in 2025 - [npr.org...]

At the base of the claim is that these companies are monetizing theft of copyrighted works, which they are. The works being used to train their platforms are not paid for. People make the erroneous assumption that if it's available online (public) that it's available to be used commercially. That is not how copyright works anywhere in the world.

Nobody has an automatic right to use copyrighted works, period. The creators have all the rights and the users have none, unless they pay for them. I know this because I am one of the most active creators in terms of actual federal copyright cases in the entire USA. I have copyright attorneys working on infringements in multiple states in the USA (NY, NJ, CT, DC, MD, MA, PA, FL, GA, CA, IL, CO). I also have counsel in Canada, UK, EU, Australia and the UAE. So, I know what I am talking about because it is a considerable part of my business activity. The creator has invested in the production of the intellectual property, they have the right to be compensated. That includes visual, audio, and written IP.

The tool doing the infringing is irrelevant. The only problem is that the Federal courts in the USA can often be split on the topic. Some say (so far) that unless the AI produced work is actually recognizable as an infringement (meaning, it is obviously copying a specific work) it isn't an infringement. So, there is a grey zone there, and some circuits of the federal courts in USA will contradict each other on this. Generally, CA and NY are more amenable to the arguments of creators where places like Texas aren't.

Keep in mind that if you haven't registered your works in DC in a timely fashion you cannot pursue the full amount of damages, which is $150k per infringement. During any case you will also have to prove the actual value of the work in terms of previous sales, licenses, or comparable ones. No judge is going to award someone who has never earned anything from their work anything but token damages. It also costs money and effort to register your works and it costs ~$500 per federal filing, so it's an investment in pursuing claims.

Talking about copyright v what is being claimed (s*xulaized deep fakes) are two different things. One is theft. The other is censorship.

I fear we have wandered WAY off topic for this thread and won't be surprised if removed.

Economics plays a much larger role in lack of traffic/converting traffic than anything else.

At times I wish we still sold on Amazon, so I could see sale shifts for myself, but we don't. However those I know who sell on Amazon and other marketplaces in the USA are doing ok-good. There's just no organic visibility on Google anymore for products and our product info pages have been pillaged by Google, spun and republished for their AI then surrounded with ads. People are still buying, but they aren't finding much on Google except AI and ads. Below is a comment from Martin Ice Web from early last month:

We are at 30% of normal traffic.
Amazon sales are up about 300% (not normal). It is because users can´t find anything on google anymore.

With the recent announcement of Google's Universal Commerce Protocol, that too will be another technique Google uses to inflate their profits by muscling their way into becoming more of a middleman (costly obstruction) between consumers and sellers. It might be best for sellers to shift to a marketplace, if they haven't done so yet, and just write Google off as the lost cause they have become.

About tool and responsibility, there is a case of someone who developed a tool to make crypto-currency exchanges really private (impossible to trace), even he only developed the software, he’s been found guilty. (Samurai Wallet)

So AI is not only about developper/user/provider. It’s an everything and big fishes will eat smaller ones.

Let's go back to the observations in January, just as a small suggestion.

Do you see any fluctuations? My Google ranking is improving, but that has no effect on the clicks. Discover is dead for my news site, except for a spike a few days ago. But Discover is currently degenerating into a spam machine.

Shop: Running surprisingly well, at least for January.

Conclusion: Google doesn't seem to like news anymore, Discover has become a spam machine, and I'm needing a holiday...

One ecom site that was hit hard in the June Core update recovered positions completely (first and second positions) in the December Core update but so few clicks compared to July 2025 before the June core update, its like a quarter of pre June update clicks and that was about half from the year before! Think people must be leaving Google or they are trapped in the "Gooligarchy" Spam at the top of the page. Not seeing any movements in the serps myself!

One ecom site that was hit hard in the June Core update recovered positions completely (first and second positions) in the December Core update but so few clicks compared to July 2025 before the June core update, its like a quarter of pre June update clicks and that was about half from the year before!

Congrats on the recovery, even though I'm sure it doesn't feel like it.

We have products ranked at the top of Google that get almost no traffic anymore because of the Googlespam above it. Just to see an organic result is 1-2 page scrolls down. If you're getting traffic now, consider yourself lucky. I'm sure it won't be long before Google comes after what traffic remains.

The core update in December largely left our site unaffected (e-commerce, price comparison, brochures). We thought we were off to a solid start in the new year, and then January 4th (increased volatility on Semrush) took away 80% of our traffic within a week. That's just insane.

This January update was insane…. All the good from December is gone…

Since two days bots are back and google traffic is rubbish again.

google search is like playing lottery. google keeps showing results where keywords are missing or the site is totaly mismatched.
This is no fun anymore.

@MIW

Since two days bots are back

MSFT and Baltic UAB are all over my sites like a plague BUT, at the moment, they use very little bandwith ... I think I may have solved my major WP probes.

and google traffic is rubbish again.

Traffic's mostly normal for me, meaning western economies are mediocre to say the very least.

Ive seen a CPC 50% drop in my adsense revenue and RPM down about 33%. It does not pay for the server. Worse in 18 years. I literally feel like just removing adsense at this point.

RPM is also low over here and I'm not with Adsense, thank god. Way better options out there. But everything is very poor on this side. Low RPM, which I think is typical for this time of year. January and Feb are usually the worst months for that. But outside factors don't help either.
Traffic has been bad throughout this month so far. Every traffic source just keeps dropping. Direct, Google and Bing are on constant daily drops. I'm now struggling to keep to November levels of traffic. I have lost all of December growth, unfortunately. But some of that growth was due to holiday season, so a small drop was expected. Alas, this waterfall doesn't end. I agree this isn't fun. I want to be able to rely on the site for future investment! How long must our patience go on for until these constant daily drops end?

ASIDE: This is the start of Tax Season (Jan-Apr) in USA. For many sellers this has traditionally been a lowered traffic period.

OTOH: When those tax returns start showing up, so do the customers!

Right, I do not know as yet whether it is me or them (maybe coincidence) however I have in the last couple of days drastically reduced WP page probes from thousands per day to tens !.!.!

I did a lot of deep diving research and found some very simple code to add to my htaccess file. I'm now goint to implement it accross all sites to see what happens. If this continues to work do the mods here want me to post this piece of code?

Meanwhile traffic continues to look normal including, surprisingly, the hotel venue which is usually very quiet at this time but doing ok, it is covering its costs.

@RedBar, you can share htaccess codes but the place to share it would be in the Apache forum here: [webmasterworld.com...]

You can link to the topic here, but by posting it there, you could have additions/ideas from others and be on topic. ;)

@tangor tax/self assessment return time in UK as well!

Clearly Google is continuing to tweak the results to continue to reduce organic traffic week by week, day by day to beat the last quarter and satiate their insatiable stock holders, but that aside January is basically the Monday of Months! People are paying off x-mas debts they ran up, filing tax returns and paying the tax man in Jan!

Throw in the general lack of confidence and uncertainties in most western economy's, the cost of living only going up... THEN add in AI job insecurities and we have a perfect storm as people try to pay off personal and business debts and hold back on spending to save for the forthcoming AI job apocalypse! This is why gold is through the roof, across the board uncertainty!

My global weekend traffic was half of where I would have expected and Monday is continuing in the same vein. I am "assuming" that it is the current geopolitics that has caused this making various speeches / comments this week in Davos more or less turbulent.

Sounds like a good time to take a break !

January 2026 Google Search Observations

People are searching about AI a lot more now.
On Google Trends, AI-related searches are going up fast. ChatGPT is one of the most searched things in the world, showing that AI is now part of daily life.

SEO is changing because of AI.
New searches like AI SEO optimization and zero-click search show that websites are trying to appear in AI answers, not just get clicks from Google links.

@Gagan_Kumar

Are these your observations or AI generated ones? We already know this, the question has to be what, if anything, should we, could we, do about what is perceived by many as a threat?

If it is a threat, more precisely what is that threat?

I'm playing devil's advocate here to stir-up the old grey matter :-)

I am noticing more and more people not scrolling down below the AI overview. CTR is at an all-time low :(