On another note: I’m wondering if Google is rolling out yet another update right now. The fluctuations I’m seeing in Sistrix across various websites today are absolutely crazy. There are quite a few sites that just lost half of their visibility overnight. My online shop is also taking quite a hit at the moment (thankfully, orders are still okay due to paid ads). Meanwhile, my news site suddenly gained a massive amount of visibility, but at the exact same time, the actual Google News traffic completely went to sleep. Is anyone else seeing these massive shifts today?

[edited by: not2easy at 1:20 pm (utc) on Jul 2, 2026]
[edit reason] requested edit [/edit]

Annihilated is all I can say, my 33 year old global site is now deemed by G to be worthless insofar as its algo is concerned. It's almost stopped ranking in the UK because of localisation, it's not ranking in other countries because ... it's not local?

Whatever G's so-called update was supposed to achieve has been a resounding success, congratulations.

my 33 year old global site is now deemed by G to be worthless insofar as its algo is concerned

I think they have removed all historical backlinks from algo evaluation completely. That's why all historical pages which used to be "Page with Redirect" category have moved to "Crawled not Indexed" category. The funny thing is that historical backlinks from times when links were actually created organically were the only high trust ranking factor they had. Since they threw out navboost and Chrome usage data (which HCU updates used), now they have no good ranking indicators and SERPs/rankings are hysterically bad, so bad they could use simple random function for ranking websites and improve relevance and quality as well as reduce spam dramatically.

I think they have removed all historical backlinks from algo evaluation completely.

That's a reasonable presumption, for my widget sector the valid pages being shown are mostly all very thin and information light.

I've spent many hours today checking various SERP results plus Analog, Awstats, Webalizer (AAW) and Statcounter. I am not at all convinced that Statcounter's accuracy for my global site is anywhere near correct. I've been using AAW for probably 20+ years and have a pretty good understanding of them and allowing for all the garbage stuff which they obviously include, AAW do actually show very comparable metrics therefore I wonder if I'm over-reacting to Statcounter's collapse in numbers?

FWIW Statcounter lines-up very similar to AAW for the hotel venue but other international sites there also seems to be a big discrepancy. I've avoided G products as much as possible however am I going to have to test out their analytics?

Opinions?

Statcounter started counting bot visits differently this year. In March, they set up a separate bots ('good' and 'bad' bots) detector dashboard, separate from visitors and it's free. You would need to visit SC and turn it on if your bot numbers are being skewed.

Yep, I'm aware of the SC bots thing however either I am being totally stupid or something is wrong with SC.

Why? According to both Awstats and Webalizer my two most popular product pages so far this month are example-01.html and example-02.html both with 100+ views each however according to SC neither page has been visited whatsoever. It is the html page visited not any of the images hotlinked.

Is it just me seeing this huge discrepancy or something of which I am totally unaware?

I realise this is not a Google search question but if SC does have an issue then it does affect my G observations :-)

Does anyone else notice a drop?
Sales have dropped for my travel site over the last days, reaching zero yesterday.
Traffic is also way down.
I guess, there is something going on again.

@chris Yes, I can report pretty much the same: shop revenue is rock bottom, and Google traffic is way down too. News site: traffic is low, though rankings actually improved. It's been like this for days now.

There is an American holiday this weekend, so, of course, G are messing with the SERP. Remember to give it all back after, eh? HA! Yea, right...

I have actually been keeping tabs and every single month this year, so far, has seen movements and traffic fluctuations. Trust me, every month so far. Anyone saying otherwise is a lie.. Mostly, as always, result in drops and NO Google never gives back. Instead, we just seemingly accept the drop. Continue the fight and loose it AGAIN! Notice the pattern here? We are not getting anywhere with this..

Also, where are those with a loud enough voice to do anything about this? I'll admit I'm a small publisher, with very little income and practically no voice. However, I can't help but think that most publishers just seem to either quit or put up and shut up.. Meanwhile, in other news, gamers hate Sony and are quite the opposite. They are being vocal.. Respect to them for, at least, trying to fight corpo greed. Meanwhile, lets all go back to sleep, right fellow publishers?

Sorry, just I have expectations. Hopes and desires just like everyone else here and its so tiring seeing it being dashed. For what and why exactly? Also, no I will not quit. This would, essentially, give Google what they want.. I do want to fight, just point me in the right direction..

I do want to fight, just point me in the right direction..

I'm not overly sure what against and how you / anyone is going to fight?

G's "strategy" for years has been to turn G search into the #1 advertising platform and it is more or less now complete. This is not going to be wound back by any government anywhere if that option even exists. The first page for many searches features 5X regular blue links with most of those 50+ featuring images and pricing.

G hasn't "won" it is providing what it believes its customers (searchers) want. IF its advertising was not working then advertisers would not pay.

I guess, there is something going on again.

Stuff is being updated by G. Earlier this week I moved (301) a regularly updated 25 year old info page from its original site to my newly AEO but established site. Checking the SERPs yesterday showed this page at #1 on its new domain therefore something is working.

The issue many publishers now have with massively reduced traffic levels is for how long can we justify / afford to keep updating our sites? Long-tail searches are still working well BUT how many actually do this? Joe Public's www usage has changed enormously, the noughties brought JP info overload, the last few years have brought ad overload, 2030s anyone?

This news may come as a relief to many. Google’s era of dominance may finally be facing a serious challenge, as an increasing number of companies will be pursuing legal action against the tech giant as a result of this judgment. If the trend continues, it could mark the beginning of open season on Google's market power.

Google loses fight against record €4.1 billion EU antitrust fine
[reuters.com...]

"The appeal brought by Google and its parent company Alphabet against the judgment of the General Court is dismissed, thereby confirming the penalty imposed for Google Search's abuse of a dominant position in the context of the Android operating system," judges said.

"The loss of the shopping comparison case had led to a slew of lawsuits against Google by companies claiming damages worth billions of dollars across half a dozen countries."

"For Google, more fines look likely in the near future for allegedly favouring its own services and products in search results and for practices related to its app store, both of which fall under the Digital Markets Act aimed at reining in the power of Big Tech."

@goodoldweb So, that is not the only penalty in the EU: Google was also slammed with a payout to Klarna

The US corporation Google is ordered to pay damages to a price comparison portal owned by the Swedish payment service Klarna. The competent Patent and Market Court in Stockholm ordered Google to pay 14.3 billion kronor (equivalent to 1.3 billion euros) to the portal PriceRunner. According to court information, Google must also pay interest amounting to the equivalent of around 419 million euros. This brings the total sum to more than 1.7 billion euros.The background is that Google allegedly favored its own offering in search results. PriceRunner is considered 'to have suffered damages because Google unlawfully favored its own price comparison service for many years,' the judges explained."

[spiegel.de ]


@Fluff_Nuts No way am I ever giving up, but it definitely takes a lot of loud, major voices to actually change anything. Unfortunately, the problem is that it ultimately comes down to the consumers, and most of them have absolutely no idea these issues even exist.

and most of them have absolutely no idea these issues even exist.

Precisely and therein lies the problem. It's not that the consumer does not care it's that, unlike us being on the "inside", they are simply not aware of what G has been doing for years plus, I assume, with the full knowledge of the US Govt.

It's not that the consumer does not care it's that, unlike us being on the "inside", they are simply not aware of what G has been doing for years

I'm not at all convinced that the consumer does care. For the average searcher, whatever Google is serving up (whether blue links or AI Overviews) may appear to be good enough. As the saying goes, perception is reality.

It appears that Gemini is now fully responsible for search results, which has resulted in a significant deterioration of the overall quality.

One of our store's products now occasionally displays star ratings from shoppers on Etsy, despite the fact that we do not sell on this platform. Similarly, some reviews appear under our product listings on eBay, even though we are not sellers on this site either. Unfortunately, these reviews often contain negative and unrelated content, which can be misleading to our potential customers.

Google's algorithm is clearly at fault here, as it seems to be incorrectly attributing reviews from other platforms to our products. This is a serious liable issue and no one to talk to. What a disgrace.

@goodoldweb,

google displays our products under Keyword left angled while the product is right angled. There is not one word left on the whole page. Just one of many examples.
Since 5 month google is active working on destroying the SE.

google displays our products under Keyword left angled while the product is right angled. There is not one word left on the whole page. Just one of many examples.
Since 5 month google is active working on destroying the SE.

Interesting strategy from G. People click on the left angled ad, not matching their intent. Return to G, find another ad with left angled, people land on a page with 45% angled, return to G again and finally click after searching on the right ad, landing on the right angled page. Making 3x the ad revenue from the same visitor...

google displays our products under Keyword left angled while the product is right angled.

We sell some products that underwent design changes over the years, and we immediately update product images when this happens. In one example, Google displays old images of a product that was modified 8 years ago and has a much different appearance. This wasn't a problem before AI when Google pulled images from our site and sent users to us. Now with AI in the mix, Google has gone back in time to display 8 year old stale images and sends us very few users. I think Google is just overwhelmed by incompetence from the top down, but we get good sales from others so it's ok if Google rots.

The MSFT bots have gone nuts ... So far this month, on some co.uk sites, we are seeing 90+% emanating from US when, in reality, 90+% is from the UK ...

In one example, Google displays old images of a product that was modified 8 years ago and has a much different appearance. This wasn't a problem before AI when Google pulled images from our site and sent users to us. Now with AI in the mix, Google has gone back in time to display 8 year old stale images and sends us very few users. I think Google is just overwhelmed by incompetence from the top down, but we get good sales from others so it's ok if Google rots.

We're seeing a similar issue where some of our products are showing with the wrong product images on Google search.

Google doing Google things again. The shop was doing quite well for two days, today it crashed. The news site was doing pretty well over the last few days, today it crashed. According to Sistrix, rankings dropped as well. I'd better not talk about the actual search results right now, otherwise this will turn into a comedy show; the nonsense is just getting worse. Another thing that stands out: Google News is becoming an even bigger mess. I am seeing more and more AI websites claiming the absolute biggest nonsense. I’m still wondering what Google actually wanted to achieve with that spam update, because reducing spam certainly couldn't have been the reason.

Crazy question?

I've closed a site and 301d it to another of my sites, my question is where have all the brute force .php bots gone to? At the moment they've not followed the 301.

Will they suddenly appear again, anyone any idea?

Google displays old images of a product that was modified 8 years ago and has a much different appearance.

We're seeing a similar issue where some of our products are showing with the wrong product images on Google search.

Ditto. To add, other AI search engines are also using product images that are matched to the wrong landing pages. I'm sure this has a negative effect on conversion rates and also builds user distrust in AI. For us, this is just another reason why we're not wasting much time with Google search.

We're a manufacturer with both Google manufacturer and merchant center accounts, so I'm not sure why Google is using old/incorrect images when we supply the most current and correct ones. I just feel Google really doesn't care because their goal is to phase out organic results.

Is anyone seeing ultra low traffic in the UK today?

Is anyone seeing ultra low traffic in the UK today?

Organic traffic in Australia has become nearly nonexistent these days, aside from a few misguided accidental clicks or confused bots. Right now, we depend entirely on paid ads to reach our audience. Mission complete Google.

big drop since yesterday evening.

we again see multiple visits to one page within seconds. This happens when an update is in progress.
User engagement is ZERO.

We have 4 weeks of all time high sales on amazon and ebay. google seems to become a less important source for users.

There is definitely an update running right now; this is the classic pattern. A few great days, then a crash, and with a bit of luck, a bounce back. Honestly, I'm just sick and tired of Google's roller coaster

@Micha,

And tomorrow google says that they just started an updated, while it has allready started.

google != trust

@martin If that happens (which I suspect it will), I'll treat you to a case of beer or cola XD