Is anyone else seeing massive bot attacks the past couple of days especially from TECHOFF SRV LIMITED supposedly now out of Andorra?

They're now a bigger PITA than MSFT!

On positive side - my AI scraper tarpit is working. Scraping has reduced significantly.

@christianz would you be happy to share how you have implemented the tarpit, I'd like to try and put something similar in place.

This is a black eye for Google. In Germany, a court has ruled that search engines can be held liable for false statements made in AI-generated overviews. More specifically, the court stated: "Since Google itself introduced the artificial intelligence and offers it to users, it must also be held accountable for its results, because only Google has influence over the AI service and the algorithms with which the AI operates."

[golem.de ]

The Core Update is finished... I hope everyone got through it relatively unscathed

[status.search.google.com ]

Atrocious...a big drop when the update started on May 23rd, and then another big drop around the 2nd and it has stayed at the lows. I noticed that the results are similar to the last disastrous update...same websites pushed up again. Let's hope this one fades too as the results are really bad now

This is what we see in our vertical after this quality downgrade:

-pages with branded items got hit very hard
-shops with non branded item got pushed
-#1 to #5 are big seller plattforms (media markt, otto, idealo)
-low content rules over good content
-traffic comes in surges 2 hours and then 1-3 hours with nearly no traffic only bots
-overall quality has tanked to an all time low

@martin as always: I can confirm that. I'm seeing it with my shop too: although we had a good day for a change the day before yesterday, things are running very poorly again now. Another thing I'm noticing: Google Ads is still having issues; the ads are being displayed, but apparently to people who have no intent to buy at all. The organic ranking is improving, though, but that's not doing any good.

On the news site, the ranking remains very stable, and yesterday Discover kicked in again; currently, I hope it stays that way. Overall, the search results are completely messed up. You constantly stumble across websites that normally shouldn't be ranking at all (totally outdated, no imprint, abysmal AI texts, AI-generated images) and news is getting more and more cluttered with corporate press releases. In other words: total chaos, and it still doesn't look like Google wants to change anything.

Yes Micha. Yesterday something changed to worse again. Very worse.

Atrocious...a big drop

My global site for the last few days has been consistently down 50%!

My localised hotel site is completely normal.

"Since Google itself introduced the artificial intelligence and offers it to users, it must also be held accountable for its results, because only Google has influence over the AI service and the algorithms with which the AI operates."

Excellent BUT how the heck can this be enforced?

What I find interesting talking with Joe Public in the pub is how many do not trust the AI results however do use it to basically confirm a question they were fairly sure about ... I do this on a regular basis:-)

google wanted search engine protections for their AI slop, the Court said no...
[searchengineland.com...]

google (and others) being held responsible as content creators will be the single most important win for actual content creators and website owners.

So, for the last couple days it was quite good, to be honest whole month of may and the first week of june. But: Since monday this week, something has changed and today looks awful. If you ask me, there is something going on right now.
I am glad that he german court has ruled out like this but to be honest: if politics would do their jobs, courts would not have to rule like this.

I've noticed some volatility this week too. Good or bad? As ever, time will tell.

Agree, definitely seeing volatility here too.

Something is definitely going on and has been since mid May. It has gotten worse in past few days.

Since my website was constantly down due to an avalanche of bots, I tested Cloudflare Turnstile (which is free), and it works quite well. I submit its challenge (a non-interactive challenge) to all visitors except known bots, and display a blank page to those who can't solve it. I assume that, like the classic Cloudflare challenge, it checks if the IP address has been reported as belonging to a bot recently and only submits the challenge if it could be from a human. The challenge reappearance time depends on the PHP session length (24 minutes by default); I temporarily set it to 12 hours so as not to inconvenience regular users.

It's not perfect, as the horde of bots is still present on the website, but they can no longer extract data. Over time, their presence decreases. The CPU load has dropped from 80-100% to an average of 50%. The bandwidth has been reduced by a factor of four or five. I've deleted many rules in nftables, and people from many countries can now access my website again. My server no longer crashes, or very rarely. However, it seems that the Chinese are employing people to bypass the captcha, as an abnormal number of Chinese visitors are managing to do so.

The day Cloudflare is down, it will be a major problem, I imagine.

My sites were crushed on Friday, June 5, and have stayed in a range of 20-25% of recent norms - which weren't so hot anyhow, but much better than this form of Google torture. I do hope that some kind of alternative to this slavish reality would appear, but I'm not expecting any change other than Google F-ing up everything all the time. Really disgusted at G and myself. I have my own adserver set up, but actually selling ads to individual websites is a chore for which I have not found time. That needs to change. Also, and off-topic, eBay's fees are so excessive I cannot use the site for anything resembling actual commerce. I encourage everybody to build out their own e-commerce, but that too takes plenty of work. Good luck to all. Humanity may survive.

The day Cloudflare is down, it will be a major problem, I imagine.

The fact that 90% of web needs to depend on Cloudflare is concerning in itself. I actually suspect Cloudflare may be low-key supporting this scraping, its driving their business. The scrapers need to be tracked down and thrown in prison.

Thursday: over 200,000 visitors. Friday: a drop. Today, Google traffic is barely trickling in. The headlines in my niche are packed with AI-generated nonsense and crypto (and, of course, football), while my Discover feed has turned into a bizarre mix of stories with about as much substance as a bowl of Kellogg's cereal. Absolute chaos.

I honestly wonder what Google is doing at the moment. I'm not seeing any major ranking shifts or significant movements in the SERPs, yet my news site is having one of its worst days in years. At least the shop is performing reasonably well right now.

For me Friday's traffic across all sites including the hotel was at 50%.

In my specialised widget sector I am not seeing many AI-generated sites however the volume of ads is massive therefore drowning the mostly localised sites that do manage to appear somewhere on the page.

At a company decision-making level we have recently been discussing amongst staff and with ALL regular bulk purchasers their opinions / feelings about the current seemingly topsy-turvy industry landscape. Their candour was very welcomed and much along the experience many here are enduring even though many of them do not even have a www SERPs presence.

Overwhelmingly their biggest issue was employing experienced trade-knowledgable staff.

I honestly wonder what Google is doing at the moment.

"Doing" suggests that they know what they are attempting to achieve!

My guess is that "they" haven't a clue because it is all theoretical claptrap dreamt-up by inexperienced "what-iffers" whose suggestions have zero consequences for themselves but do so for probably the vast majority of society.

What an appalling weekend's traffic for my global site ... In my first 12 hours of Monday I have already had more traffic than Saturday and Sunday combined.

For decades my weekends averaged 70% of my weekday average however this year the reduction has been very noticeable and, throwing this out there for opinions, I feel it may be the increased localisation of the SERPs in that many businesses in my industry do not work weekends now and those searching for my widgets are the public sourcing locally.

Does this make sense?

Looks like something has happened in the last few days. I'm seeing a lot of volatility again.

Traffic to the news site has continued to decline. There’s no competing with the World Cup. News in my niche is flooded with old articles about the weekend’s game, soccer betting, and articles that are reposted hourly (not updated). Traffic is so low that it’s not even worth publishing an article right now.

The shop, on the other hand, is currently generating good sales via Google, which, to be honest, surprises me quite a bit.

Overall: Search results are a disaster even outside my niche. More and more spam sites are showing up; they seem to be popping up everywhere right now because of the World Cup.

Most of my sites have been hit from a new (for me) MSFT IP this morning supposedly emanating from Des Moines, the entire block has been added to my list.

There’s no competing with the World Cup.

Where I live there seems to be very little interest at the moment, most pubs are showing it however very few are taking any notice and there is a wide cross-section of ages and people. Maybe once we get past the first round it'll pick up. I haven't noticed an increase in football advertising.

Eurasian traffic in the mornings is especially slow at the moment and considering this area is where we do most of our business, it's way out of its norm. My question has to be has G introduced more localisation to many of these countries? If so do I need to consider revamping all my old country and language-specific domains?

Put this in your weirdness pipe and smoke it. On Thursday, my sites had the lowest revenue possibly EVER. I complained through G's feedback widget on AdSense (I've done this before and seen positive results). Basically, I just said something to the effect: "I'm so sick and tired of this crap. Stop it." (I had a blogger site nicked for not having some EU consent form; fixed it and then...)

Friday was a little better. Saturday was the best day of the month, easily. Sunday, Monday normal... usual kind of sh--ty. Tuesday, today, already best day of the month at 8 am on very little traffic. Impression and page RPMs are 6-8X normal. Is Google fixing things or was it something I said (or lots of people said). Investigating, with fingers crossed...

Edit: One thing I have noticed, there is no new Adsense Observations for June posted. May had fewer than 20 posts. People have given up. Not me.

Correction: Adsense Observations for June posted this morning (not by me). I am the only poster since OP.

The AdSense thread was finally updated earlier today. I normally update it as soon as a new post shows up for the month, but the May thread did not progress since May 20 so I started a new one here: [webmasterworld.com...]

OK, I see you've found it - sorry for the inconvenience.

Where I live there seems to be very little interest at the moment, most pubs are showing it however very few are taking any notice and there is a wide cross-section of ages and people. Maybe once we get past the first round it'll pick up. I haven't noticed an increase in football advertising.

I’ve no idea how much interest there is in this here (I certainly aren’t interested, anyway). Google, in any case, couldn’t care less. The news is full of reports on this topic.

@ not2easy, Thanks for the thread.

I didn´t think it could be more worse but then google changed something last friday.

Our niche are full of websites with AI slop and worse: totaly incorrect information.
google trust this domains because they are big resellers.

Meanwhile all the descriptions in my niche have the same look and feel and have the same information. All AI driven.
There is no difference between brand A, B or C.

What the heck our well written descriptions are burried down page1 to 3.

google doesn´t care about their customers. It is like the missleading AI-summaries. They just don´t care.

For my global traffic it is now consistent at 50%, on its a$$ and dying.

Anyway G's classads is now in full force after a popular widget search I was presented with a block of image ads 5 wide, 8 deep, yep 40 image ads. So ... IF I were shopping I'd possibly be quite satisfied with the options but as an information seeker the results as presented were useless BUT the AI was spot on since it was mostly sourced from me with zero link through!

I have this feeling my tolerance is being tested to the limit for my most comprehensive site as-is.

It's getting really frustrating. According to Search Console, impressions for my news site have exploded, but the number of clicks is ridiculously low. At the same time, my online shop is doing extremely well and is generating significantly more revenue than at the beginning of the month.

The biggest joke, however, is my personal Discover feed. Google seems to be completely ignoring my interests. Besides political party press releases, I'm getting a flood of random articles that have nothing to do with what I read, search for, or click on. Many of them look AI-generated, and with others you genuinely wonder what the author was even trying to say.

Something clearly changed, but from a user perspective the relevance and quality of Search, Discover, and Google News have noticeably deteriorated.