We were due for a broad core update, and a broad core update we received. The June 2025 Google core update was a red-hot update that rolled out on June 30^th right before the July 4^th holiday weekend. The update took 16 days to fully roll out, which was shorter than Google said it could take when the update was initially released. As I covered via my “Core Update Notes” on social media each morning, it was a huge update with many sites surging and dropping. And that included HCU(X) sites surging back, which was awesome to see. I’ll cover more about that soon.

Note, if you are new to core updates, you should read my core update primer containing FAQs and key points for site owners. That’s always a great place to start.

Regarding volatility, I have many websites documented across verticals and countries that surged or dropped heavily based on the June 2025 core update. To give you a quick view of some of the largest drops and surges based on the update, here are some screenshots of search visibility trending:

As I explained in my recent post about AI Search accounting for less than 1% of traffic to most sites, DO NOT ignore Google Search and let quality drop. If you do, then you leave your site susceptible to impact from a broad core update. It was only five days after that post that the June core update rolled out. And again, some sites plummeted in search visibility.

Pre-core update volatility – A reviews system update?
As Barry covered heavily on Search Engine Roundtable, there was a ton of volatility leading up to the June 2025 core update. Volatility was heavy in early June and then more in mid-to-late June.

One thing I noticed with that volatility is that many sites impacted by previous reviews updates (including older Product Reviews Updates) were seeing a lot of movement. I covered that in my “Core Update Notes” tweet on 7/1.

Based on my analysis, I believe Google could have pushed a big reviews system update behind the scenes. Note, following the April 2023 reviews update, and then the November 2023 reviews update, Google explained the reviews system would be updated on a “regular and ongoing basis” behind the scenes. They also explained that they would not be announcing additional reviews updates. In addition, Google’s Danny Sullivan later explained the system is still being updated, and frequently.

For example, here are some of the screenshots of volatility in early-to-mid June before the June core update rolled out (on sites that were previously impacted by reviews updates). Note, Google could have updated more than just the reviews system with the early June volatility, but I do believe the reviews system was part of it.

If you quickly look at the screenshot below, you might think this site surged with the June core update starting on 6/30. Nope, it was over a week before the update rolled out (on 6/21):

Reminder: Core updates begin when they are announced, not before.
Also, just a reminder that Google has emphasized several times that core updates begin when core updates are announced. Therefore, the pre-core update movement starting in early June was not the broad core update (which began rolling out on June 30^th). Google pushes updates all the time including smaller core updates (specific core systems getting updated outside of broad core updates). When that happens, those smaller core updates can have a big impact on some sites.

Here is a tweet of mine from the March 2025 core update where I explain this (after reaching out to Google and hearing back from them about the pre-March core update volatility). They explained that volatility was NOT the March core update…

And here is a closer view of Google’s documentation explaining they can push smaller core updates:

HCU(X) Sites Surge… Finally
This was probably the biggest surprise based on the June core update. Sites that were obliterated by the September 2023 Helpful Content Update (HCUX) finally started surging back. And some were surging back from the dead (literally back from no visibility at all). I documented this heavily on social media based on tracking a list of 400 sites hit hard by the HCU(X) over time. It’s basically a barometer for sites impacted by the September 2023 HCU(X).

Google clearly adjusted something with their systems that evaluate the helpfulness of content. It’s important to remember that Google baked the HCU into its core ranking system with the March 2024 core update and the HCU classifier was removed. But those sites impacted by the September 2023 HCU(X) were hit even harder with the March 2024 core update. So it was awesome to see a number of sites surge back with the June 2025 core update. Many aren’t back to where they were before September 2023, but there are some full (or near-full) recoveries in the mix.

Here are some examples of sites heavily impacted by the September 2023 HCU(X) surging back with the June core update:

Also, it’s interesting to note that the surges started on July 8^th and July 9^th AFTER the initial movement we saw from the June core update. It’s a great example of Google updating a specific system, or several, during the core update. The sites didn’t move until July 8^th. Here is my tweet about that:

And as I shared on social media, not all HCU(X) sites surged back. Some dropped even more… Unfortunately, there are some site owners that gave up and abandoned their efforts. I totally understand that based on what was happening over time (with no recovery as update after update rolled out). You can see examples of the recent drops in my tweet below.

AI Overview Impact – I warned site owners this could happen.
In my post about AI Search driving less than 1% of traffic to most sites (with many receiving less than .5% from AI Search tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, etc.), I explained that site owners should NOT ignore Google Search to completely focus on AI Search. As of June 2025, organic search (and mostly Google) drives a majority of the traffic for most sites. And if site owners switch their entire focus to implementing tactics for AI Search, then quality could drop across their sites. And if that happens, then they leave their sites susceptible to getting hit by a broad core update.

Well, it was only five days later that Google rolled out the June broad core update, and like I explained earlier, many sites saw a ton of volatility (surging or dropping). Also as part of my post, I explained that broad core updates can impact all Google surfaces, including web search, image search, video search, Google News, top stories, the News tab in Search, and Google Discover. But it doesn’t stop there, AI Overviews and AI Mode are both within the “Web Search” bucket and both are “rooted in Google’s core quality and ranking systems.” In other words, they can also be impacted by broad core updates.

Here is Google explaining that:

Well, like I knew would happen, sites negatively impacted by the June core update saw visibility in AI Overviews drop as well. I shared several examples of that across social media. You can see some examples below.

Here is AI Overview visibility for two different sites impacted by the June core update:

And like I explained above, all Google surfaces can be impacted by broad core updates. Here are some sites seeing movement outside of web search based on the broad core update. For example, image search surging and then the News tab surging for another site.

E.g. the News tab in Search impacted:

And image search impacted:

In addition, I’ve had a number of publishers reaching out about Discover impact. For example, clicks and impressions in Discover dropping heavily as the update rolled out. That’s based on Google’s reevaluation of quality for the sites in question. I have covered the Discover impact many times before.

So please, don’t ignore Google Search. You could pay a heavy price if you let quality drop over time.

YMYL Movement – A lot of it.
When core updates roll out, I’m often asked which specific verticals I’m seeing movement in. It’s important to understand that broad core updates are global updates that impact all verticals. I’ve also explained many times that you will never reverse engineer a broad core update since Google’s core ranking system is extremely sophisticated and contains many different subsystems working together to output a score.

Sites containing YMYL content (Your Money or Your Life) can always see a lot of volatility during broad core updates, but I saw a ton of volatility with the June core update. For example, health and medical, finance, legal, etc. I just wanted to mention that in case you focus on YMYL topics.

Sites focused on YMYL topics are held to a higher standard algorithmically by Google. That’s important to understand if you run a site in a YMYL category. It’s another reason to ensure “quality” is as high as possible across your site. And remember, “quality” is more than just content. Google has explained it’s about content, the user experience, how things are presented, and more. Don’t forget about Navboost, which tracks 13 months of user interaction signals. It’s an important system to Google and it’s how Google can determine happy versus unhappy users.

Here are some examples of sites focused on YMYL topics seeing a lot of volatility. Again, this is across health and medical, finance, legal, etc.

Decoupling versus Coupling: Not all sites are seeing a decoupling of clicks and impressions.
I also wanted to quickly mention that not all sites are seeing a decoupling of impressions and clicks. I have some clients where AI Overviews do not trigger often and clicks and impressions are coupled (like most sites used to see before AI Overviews entered the scene).

For example, below you can see clicks and impressions remain coupled over time for a client of mine. Also, the site surged with the June core update and both clicks and impressions increased at about the same level. Again, just a reminder that not all sites are seeing “The Great Decoupling”.

And here’s another client of mine that’s not affected by AIOs (they just don’t trigger often based on their niche):

Recovery from the March 2025 core update and the importance of clearly escaping the gray area of Google’s algorithms.
The last topic I wanted to cover is recovery from the March 2025 core update. You can always see recoveries from previous core updates during subsequent core updates, but it was interesting to see some dramatic surges back only a few months after the March 2025 core update rolled out.

I’ve always explained that you want to get clearly out of the gray area from a quality perspective. If not, then you can see surges and drops with every core update. If Google turns a dial up or down algorithmically with a core system, or several, then sites can move from the gray area and surge or drop. For the site below, it was a positive move… at least for this core update.

Summary: The June Core Update was big. Really big.
Again, the June core update was a red-hot broad core algorithm update causing a lot of volatility across verticals and countries. And that’s fitting since it rolled out right before the July 4^th holiday when we already see fireworks. From HCU(X) surges to heavy YMYL impact to AIOs and AI Mode impact, the June core update was an interesting broad core update to analyze.

Moving forward, I do believe we’ll see another core update, or two, in the fall. So if your site has been negatively impacted by the March or June core updates, I recommend first running a delta report to identify the reason for the drop. And if “quality” is the issue (which is more than just content), use the “kitchen sink” approach to remediation, work hard to surface as many quality issues as possible that can be impacting the site, and then address as many of those problems as you can. For example, work on improving “quality indexing” levels, improve the user experience, the advertising and affiliate situation, fix technical SEO problems causing quality problems, and more. You will typically need another broad core update to see recovery so focus on long-term improvements. That’s what Google wants to see. Good luck.

GG

The post The June 2025 Google Core Algorithm Update – Analysis and Findings including HCU(X) surges, AI Overview impact, YMYL volatility, and more first appeared on The Internet Marketing Driver.

AI search is here, it’s growing, and you can’t miss article after article about the death of SEO, organic search, Google search traffic, etc. It’s a little out of control right now… Sure, AI Search traffic from tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, etc., will continue to grow, but if you look at the actual data, organic search (and Google Search in particular) still drives a majority of traffic to most websites.

Even though that’s been documented, I’m finding many people either believe otherwise or are overly focusing on AI Search in the short term (and ignoring Google). I think that’s a big mistake and wanted to quickly cover the traffic differences now and the longer-term risks associated with ignoring Google.

And in case you are new to my blog, I covered two years ago how AI Search will eventually lead to Jarvis – a personal AI assistant that knows everything about you, your likes, dislikes, your health, your travels, and more, and can make customized recommendations for you in real-time. Jarvis will be ambient, seeing what you see, experiencing what you experience, and will be always looking to help. But… we aren’t there yet and site owners should not ignore important channels in the short-term.

A Recent AI Search Conversation with an IT executive:
I was at a party this past weekend having a conversation with an IT executive about the topic of AI Search, the future of Google Search, the great decoupling of clicks and impressions, and more. I could tell he had read some articles about Search but he wasn’t too close to what’s been going on in the field. His view was a bit extreme, heavily ‘doom and gloom’, and without having any data to back it up. It was a great conversation but I felt he wasn’t fully informed about how most sites received traffic (and how much from each source).

About ten minutes into the conversation, I asked how much traffic he thought AI Search led to sites now in June 2025. For example, combined traffic from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, etc. He took a few seconds and came back with “30-40%?”I immediately explained it was less than 1%, and for many sites I have access to it’s actually under .5%. He was surprised and said, “Well, maybe things have been overblown a bit in the news…”

You can say that again!

After that conversation, I thought it would be helpful for site owners and marketers to make sure they understood how much traffic AI Search is driving to their own sites now in June 2025. And beyond that, understand how that compares to Google and organic search overall. Then based on the data, make sure they don’t ignore important sources of traffic (which for many is Google Search).

The risk of ignoring Google could end up impacting rankings across search features like AIOs, the 10-blue links, featured snippets, image search, video mode, Google News, Discover, and even AI Mode (which is the future of Search according to Google). I’ll cover more about this soon.

Tracking AI Search in GA4, Miniscule Numbers, and a Major SEO Risk:
The conversation I covered earlier, and several others I’ve had like it, led me to set up better GA4 tracking for AI Search across even more sites. I ended up finding an outstanding tutorial from Dana DiTomaso which explains step-by-step how to set up a custom channel group for AI Search. Once set up, it was easy to compare the AI Search channel to other key channels for your site. In addition, Dana explains how to quickly set up a custom report that shows traffic and trending from the channel overall, but also from each AI Search tool like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, etc.

Here is Dana’s tutorial:

And the more I checked, the more I saw miniscule numbers (under 1% with many under .5%). Again, I know AI search traffic will grow, and I’m not saying AI search isn’t important to focus on, but I think site owners run the risk of missing the forest for the trees by heavily focusing on AI search right now and ignoring Google Search. And maybe not just ignoring Google Search but implementing tactics that could actually hurt SEO (and even severely). I’ll come back to that later in the post.

For now, here are several different sites across verticals and sizes. Below, you can see traffic from AI Search versus other channels. I think you’ll get the picture very quickly. And it matches a recent study that explained AI Search was driving less than 1% of traffic to most sites across the web (at least now).

Below, you will first see the amount of traffic per channel. AI Search is a very small percentage across each site.

Site 1: B2C

AI Search trending (up, but still a tiny piece of traffic):

Organic Search trending (the top driver of traffic for the site):

Site 2: News publisher (niche)

AI Search trending (again, up but still a very small percentage of traffic):

Organic search trending (the leading driver of traffic for the site):

Site 3: Health/Medical

AI Search trending (not really trending up like the others and still a tiny percentage of traffic for the site):

Google organic search trending (the vast majority of traffic for the site):

Site 4: And finally, how about a smaller site focused on a niche vertical?

AI Search trending (up, but a very small percentage of total traffic):

Organic search trending (stable and the largest driver of traffic to the site):

As you can see across sites and verticals, AI Search is a tiny piece of traffic in June 2025. Yes, it will grow, but Google Search, and organic search overall, is a majority of traffic for most sites. I’ll cover the risk of ignoring this next.

Ignore Google Search at your own peril: Broad core updates can impact all of Search, including AIOs, AI Mode, and much more:
I might write a post covering this topic in greater detail, but I wanted to quickly cover it here first. There’s a lot of talk about the great decoupling and traffic dropping for sites due to AI Overviews (and soon AI Mode). But the fact of the matter is that Google still drives the most traffic to sites by a mile. So if site owners start focusing on AI Search and ignoring Google, then potential problems could creep in quality-wise.

And by the way, a strong and balanced SEO strategy should have already been covering much of what you need for AI Search. Rand Fishkin wrote a great article about that recently. And Lily Ray followed up yesterday with a great post of her own discussing why the rise of AI Search does NOT mean the death of SEO. She also covers why the recommendations she is seeing for AI Search are EXACTLY what many SEOs have been recommending for years.

Here is a great section from Lily’s post:

Next, based on the articles being written about AI Search, how to rank in LLMs, etc., some site owners may be completely changing how they write content, some might be using AI-generated content to fill gaps based on LLM visibility tracking tools, they might be ignoring quality overall for a site, not focusing on providing a strong UX and ad situation, not focusing on strong technical SEO, and more. And for sites going down that path and ignoring Google, they run the risk of letting quality issues creep in. If that happens over time, they become susceptible to getting impacted by a broad core update down the line.

If that happens, AI Overviews can be impacted, rankings in the 10-blue links could be impacted, featured snippets could be impacted, Discover can be impacted, image and video search can be impacted, Google News and Top Stories can be impacted, and even AI Mode can be impacted. All of these are search features that can be impacted by major algorithm updates like broad core updates. And if you’re wondering if AI Overviews and AI Mode can actually be impacted by broad core updates, the answer is YES. Google confirmed that AIOs can be impacted after I shared about that last year.

And for AI Mode, Google has also explained that AI Mode is rooted in its core quality and ranking systems. So yes, core updates can impact AI Mode results. Google’s fan out approach within AI Mode triggers multiple queries, so the results for those queries that AI Mode is retrieving can absolutely be impacted by core updates.

So site owners may be chasing rankings in LLMS and ignoring the top driver of traffic now. If that happens, site owners might be wishing for those rankings in AIOs or AI Mode again versus complaining about them.

Set up AI Search tracking and reference your own GA4 data to see what I’m talking about traffic-wise.

And if you are impacted by a broad core update, you might have months of remediation work to improve “quality” and then Google will need to see those improvements in place over the long-term. Only then, and usually during a subsequent broad core update, will you have a chance at recovery. So you might drop in the 10-blue links, AIOs, featured snippets, image search, video mode, Top Stories, Google News, Discover, and even AI Mode if this happens.

Unfortunately, I feel like we are going to see this happen with sites ignoring Google Search in the short term and instead implementing unproven tactics with the hope of improving visibility in AI Search like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, and more. And again, read Rand’s post and Lily’s post about how your SEO strategy should have already been covering AI Search.

AI Search is growing but Google Search is still incredibly important for traffic and revenue – at least until Jarvis arrives.
Moving forward, I highly recommend setting up GA4 tracking today for AI Search, viewing the amount of traffic from AI Search, and comparing that to other sources of traffic like Google Search and organic search overall. Then make sure you don’t miss the forest for the trees by overly focusing on AI Search over other important sources of traffic like Google. Remember, letting quality problems creep in can cost site owners dearly when broad core updates roll out.

By the way, definitely ping me on social media or send me an email once you set up GA4 tracking for AI Search. Most sites I’m checking are under 1% for AI Search with many under .5%. I’d love to hear about what you are seeing!

GG

The post AI Search Currently Drives Less Than 1% of Traffic To Most Sites, Google Is Still Dominant, and Watch The Long-term Risk of Ignoring Google Search first appeared on The Internet Marketing Driver.

At I/O last week, Google explained that AI Overviews were expanding to 200+ countries and over 40+ languages. They also explained that AI Mode is now available to all users in the United States without needing to opt in via Search Labs. So one thing is for sure, Google is driving forward with both AIOs and AI Mode…

Beyond that, Google’s Liz Reid explained that AI Mode is the future of Search. That’s a big statement and AI Mode can radically impact how users engage with the search results, how much traffic publishers receive from Google, and more.

Regarding traffic from Search, we know that both AI Overviews and AI Mode can negatively impact clicks and click-through rate from the search results. But we also know it’s hard to gain hard data supporting that statement. That’s because Google doesn’t break out AIO data in Google Search Console and AI Mode data isn’t even being tracked yet. That’s coming soon, but it’s not even in GSC at all yet.

AIO data is there in GSC, but it’s mixed in with 10-blue links data. But like I’ve said many times before, good luck trying to analyze that data in GSC. With AIOs mixed in with 10-blue links data (which includes featured snippets), it’s not easy trying decipher the impact of AI Overviews.   

So what’s a site owner to do?

Understanding AIO impact. There’s more than one way to uncover the impact.
Based on AI Overviews ranking in the SERPs, site owners could very well be seeing a drop in clicks even when they rank in the same position before the AI Overview joined the party. But it’s hard to prove that without some data showing the before and after performance numbers.

Well, I’m going to show you one way to get a stronger feel for how AIOs are impacting traffic for your site. It’s not perfect but can definitely give you a stronger feel for the impact of AIOs ranking for your queries.

Combining third-party AIO data with GSC data. Here’s what we’ll be doing.
The approach I’ll document below includes exporting all queries via third-party tools that yield AI Overviews when your site ranks in the SERPs for those queries. You don’t necessarily need to rank in the AIO, but just that one is showing up when you are ranking in the SERPs overall. Then we’ll export all query data from GSC via the Search Console API. We’ll do that for two date ranges – one in the past before AIOs were ranking and then a recent date range when AIOs are ranking. Then through vlookup magic, we’ll combine the data to see changes to clicks and click-through rate (if any).

And if you find queries where your site ranks in the same position, or even better across both date ranges, then you can check clicks and click-through rate to determine the impact of the AI Overview ranking in the same SERP. I’ve been doing this for some clients and it’s a good way to get a feel for how AIOs are impacting clicks and click-through rate for those queries.

Note, this process is definitely easier for sites with a lot of search visibility and strong traffic from Google. If your site doesn’t receive a ton of traffic from Google, and doesn’t have a ton of visibility, then this process might not yield the best results for you.

What you’ll need: Tools of the trade.

• Access to third-party visibility tools. I will be pulling AIO data from Semrush, ahrefs, and Sistrix for this tutorial and deduping the data in Excel.
• You will need the ability to export query data via the Search Console API. I have written a number of tutorials using Analytics Edge (which now has a free version and works with both Excel and Google Sheets), but you can use any method or tool you want to export the data. You will need the API if you want more than 1K rows from the GSC UI (which most sites will need).
• Excel or Google Sheets. I’ll be using Excel for this tutorial.

Let’s get started.

How to measure the impact of AIOs ranking for your queries:

1. Export all AIO data across visibility tools.
Fire up Semrush and enter the domain you want to analyze. Then click the Positions tab. Under SERP features, select ‘SERP Features on SERP’ and then click ‘AI Overview’. The report will show all queries that the site ranks for when an AI Overview is ranking as well. Note, this does not mean the site ranks in the AI Overview. It simply means the AIO is ranking in the same SERP when your site is ranking as well…

We want to know the impact of an AIO on clicks and CTR overall, so that’s why we are selecting that option. You could always select ‘Domain ranks’ instead of ‘SERP Features on SERP’ to use keyword data when your site does rank in the AIO.

Also, when viewing the Positions report, you can click the ‘Organic’ tab to just view 10-blue links data without other SERP features mixed in like PAA. And you can filter by top 10 rankings if you wanted to get a tighter list of queries that rank well in the SERPs when AIOs rank as well. Once you are ready, export the data from Semrush to Excel or Google Sheets.

2. Fire up ahrefs and enter the domain you want to analyze.
Click the ‘Organic keywords’ link in the left navigation. Then click ‘Add filter’ at the top of the report and select ‘SERP features’. Click the radio button for ‘On SERP’ and then click the checkbox for ‘AI overview’. The report will now show all queries the site ranks for when an AI Overview ranks as well. Again, this does not mean the site ranks in the AI Overview. It just means an AI Overview is ranking in the SERPs when the site ranks overall for the query. Again, you can always choose ‘Where target ranks’ if you want a list of queries where the site actually ranks in the AIO. Export the data when you are ready.

3. Next, fire up Sistrix and enter the domain you want to analyze.
Click the ‘Keywords’ link in the left-side navigation. You’ll notice there is a preset filter for ‘AI Overview’ that you can click. This will yield keywords that the site ranks for when an AI Overview also ranks in the SERP. Export the data.

4. Dedupe the data.
Use your spreadsheet application of choice to combine all of the queries in one worksheet named ‘AIOs Deduped’ and then dedupe them. In Excel, you can do this by clicking the Data menu and then ‘Remove Duplicates’ in the ribbon. The resulting list will be your core AIO query list for the site you are analyzing. These are all of the queries that yield AI Overviews in the SERPs when your site is ranking (based on third-party visibility data).

5. Export GSC data via the Search Console API for two different timeframes.
Our goal is to compare the current performance data with AIOs ranking in the SERPs to a previous timeframe when AIOs were not ranking (or at least a time well in the past to see the difference in clicks and CTR). Note, this is not a exact science… I recommend exporting the past month of performance data and comparing to a previous month of data well in the past. AI Overviews rolled out officially in May of 2024 so you can test using a month before that timeframe or even later dates if you believe AIOs were not ranking for those queries then.

If you are using Analytics Edge, then follow my previous tutorials for exporting the data while comparing timeframes. The resulting worksheets will contain all performance data for the site for each timeframe. I would name them ‘Queries’ for the current timeframe and then ‘Queries Prev’ for the previous timeframe. But that’s for all query data and not just the queries where AIOs are ranking. We’ll use vlookup magic to help with that situation… Also, I’ll cover the importance of making sure rankings are stable across both timeframes when you compare the data for individual queries. More on that soon.

6. Quick status check. What we have now.
We now have three worksheets in the spreadsheet. The first worksheet contains all of the queries that yield AIOs in the SERPs for the site you are analyzing. Then we have two worksheets containing all query data for the site for two different timeframes (the current timeframe and then a timeframe in the past). Now we’ll use some vlookup magic to combine the data, which will give us a view of how AIOs are impacting clicks and click-through rate.

7. Use vlookup to pull in GSC data for queries yielding AI Overviews.
Vlookup is a powerful formula for retrieving data from another table or different worksheet based on a matching cell in the current worksheet. For our purposes, we will use each query in the first worksheet to reference the GSC data across both timeframes. If there’s a match query-wise, then we’ll pull in the performance data for that query from both timeframes we are comparing. We’ll also add columns to show the difference for each metric.

Then the first worksheet will contain all queries yielding AIOs for the site we are analyzing, including performance data from the current timeframe and the timeframe in the past. This will make it easier to analyze the change in clicks and click-through rate for those queries (while also making sure rankings have remained stable for those queries).

8. Add vlookup formulas for clicks, click-through rate, and position.
In the worksheet containing all of the deduped AI Overview queries, add new columns for Clicks Current, Clicks Previous, Clicks Change, CTR Current, CTR Previous, CTR Change, and Position Current, Position Previous and Position Change. I’ll provide the first set of vlookup formulas for pulling clicks from the GSC exports for current timeframe and previous timeframe and determining the change in clicks. Then you can easily adjust that formula for the other fields you just created for CTR and position.

First, here is the vlookup formula we will use for the column titled ‘Clicks Current’:

=IFERROR(VLOOKUP(‘AIOs Deduped’!A2, Queries!A:E,2,FALSE), 0)

The vlookup uses the query as the lookup and then checks the worksheet with GSC data from the current timeframe. If there’s a match, it returns the second column in that worksheet, which is the number of clicks. The IFERROR part of the formula checks to see if an error is returned (like if there is no value since the query wasn’t present). If so, it just adds the number 0 to the cell. You can add whatever value you want, but I included 0, which I can easily use for filtering down the line.

9. Apply the formula to the entire column.
Once you hit enter and apply the formula, make sure to hover over the cell and double click the bottom right corner to apply that formula to each cell in the column. You should do this for each of the columns once you apply the formula to the first cell in that column. It’s an easy way to copy that formula to each cell in the column (which can be many rows).

10. Copy the vlookup formula for additional columns.
Next, copy that formula and paste it in the field for Clicks Previous. You’ll need to change the worksheet it references to get the right data. Make sure it pulls from the worksheet titled ‘Queries Prev’ or whatever you named the worksheet containing the GSC data for the previous timeframe. Again, you can click the bottom right corner of that cell to apply the new formula to each row in the column.

11. Now you can use that base formula for click-through rate.
Again, use the core formula for the additional columns. Make sure you are referencing the right worksheets for current versus previous timeframe and then change the field from 2 to 4 to pull the CTR data versus clicks data. CTR is the fourth column so that’s why we are changing 2 to 4. Do this for both the CTR Current and CTR Previous columns.

12. And finally, do this for Position Previous and Position Current columns.
Note, you will need to change the field to 5 which is where position is in the worksheets.

13. Don’t forget to add the difference columns.
Also, make sure to add columns to show the difference in clicks, click-through rate, and position. That can help you easily identify the gaps there when comparing the timeframes. I added columns for Clicks Change, CTR Change, and Position Change. Clicks and Position uses simple subtraction while CTR change should give you the percentage drop. You can subtract the current CTR from the previous CTR and then divide by the previous CTR to come up with the percentage change.

14. Identify the impact.
Before slicing and dicing the data, you might want to copy the worksheet data to a new worksheet and ‘paste as values’. Then you don’t need to deal with the formulas causing problems when filtering the data. Then review the queries looking for a similar position when comparing timeframes. If the position is much different, then that can greatly impact clicks and click-through rate. For example, if a site was negatively or positively impacted by a major algorithm update, then position could be way off from the past. And that change could send clicks and CTR dropping or surging heavily.

You want to find queries where your site is ranking in about the same position. It’s also worth noting that a drop in clicks can help identify a drop in CTR, but clicks alone could be impacted by other factors. For example, a newsy topic could drive impressions way up, which could have impacted the number of clicks. You can also import impressions by using vlookup which can help while analyzing the data.

Below, you can see a number of queries where position remained stable, but clicks and click-through rate dropped pretty heavily.

Some recommendations and tips for site owners:

• When exporting GSC data, make sure to compare to a timeframe in the past when AIOs were *probably* not ranking. You have 16 months of data so use that. Remember, AIOs officially rolled out in May of 2024.
• Like I explained earlier, this process works much better for sites with a lot of search visibility and traffic from Google. If your site doesn’t have a ton of visibility and traffic from Search, this might not yield great results.
• After running the numbers, make sure position has remained relatively stable. If your site has been impacted by a broad core update, or an unconfirmed update, rankings could have changed radically. And those changes could impact clicks and click-through rate heavily.
• When you identify good examples of queries where AIOs are impacting clicks and CTR, you could use the GSC API to export data by month over the past 12 or 16 months to see the decline over time. You could also graph trending over time, which would be interesting to see.
• Make sure to spot-check the SERPs for queries where you are seeing heavy impact. You never know what you are going to find SERP feature-wise. Or, you may see variations of AI Overviews, new ways the data is being presented, more visuals, and more.
• Don’t just run this analysis once. I recommend running this periodically to see the impact of AIOs on clicks and CTR for the queries your site ranks for (especially as Google pushes more changes with AIOs and AI Mode).

Summary: Combining third-party tool data with GSC data to gain visibility into AIO impact.
Google isn’t making it easy for site owners to analyze the impact of AI Overviews on clicks and click-through rate, but you can leverage the tools available to get a stronger feel for the impact. By combining third-party AIO data with GSC data via the Search Console API, you can see impact over time of AIOs ranking in the search results. I recommend spending some time soon and running the numbers across your sites. Google has been expanding AIOs greatly over time, and the results may surprise you – or not. Feel free to ping me on social media to let me know what you find! Good luck.

GG

The post How to measure the impact of AI Overviews on clicks and click-through rate using third-party AIO data, the Google Search Console API, and Analytics Edge first appeared on The Internet Marketing Driver.

Update: June 11, 2025
Google finally sent me a statement after I asked if they sanctioned the Reddit AI translation situation. I also asked if it was ok now to use AI translations since Reddit was heavily doing that across countries. They have published tens of millions of urls with AI-translated content.

Like I originally covered in my post, Google’s ‘Scaled content abuse’ spam policy does NOT specifically say that AI-translated content is spam. If you leverage AI to translate high-quality and helpful content, then it’s ok. The spam policy is more about scaling content with little or no value to users, content that’s produced to manipulate search engines, etc. Google also said that they don’t provide individualized support for any site. So I guess they did not specifically sanction the use of AI translations for Reddit.

Here is the statement I received from Google about the situation:
“While we don’t comment on the status of specific sites or pages, nor do we provide individualized support for any site, our policies do not strictly define content that has been translated by AI as spam. Our scaled content abuse policy mentions automated transformations, including translations, as part of the overall warning against creating large amounts of unoriginal content that provides little to no value to users.”

In addition, Google is removing information about blocking auto-translated content from their documentation about managing multilingual sites. I had a feeling they would do that. I think that was just overlooked…

Moving forward, site owners must be objective about the quality of their content before pulling the trigger and deciding to translate mass amounts of content. If the content is not high quality, not helpful, etc., and a site owner scales AI translations of that content, then the site could risk getting hit by a spam update or even receive a manual action for ‘Scaled content abuse’. Beware.

You can read the original post below if you’re not familiar with the Reddit AI translation situation.

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In a previous post, I explained how Reddit was heavily using AI translated content, it is indexable by Google, and how that content was surging like crazy in the search results. Note, Reddit has been very transparent about their use of machine translation over time and how it’s being used across a number of languages now.

And Beyond Reddit, I also explained how using machine translation in the past has historically been a very risky thing for site owners to do from a Google standpoint. For example, I’ve had sites reach out after getting a manual action or smoked during a spam update based on scaling via machine translation (which could also use AI for translating content).

So, after Reddit added tens of millions of AI-translated urls to the site, I was eager to see what Google would do about it. That’s a ton of AI-translated content… Surely there would be some action taken by Google, right? I’m seeing millions of AI-translated urls per country (for some countries).

For example, I see 2.3M urls ranking in France with AI-translated content:

And I see 2.4M urls ranking in Spain with AI-translated content:

And keep in mind, I’ve seen content translated into over 20 different languages based on checking hreflang tags for Reddit’s content. Needless to say, this is using AI-translations at massive scale…

So, wouldn’t this fall under “Scaled content abuse”?? And maybe a worse situation, would Google take algorithmic action against Reddit via a spam update? Again, I’ve had companies reach out to me after seeing that happen. It’s not pretty. More about manual actions and spam updates later in this article.

Is it safe? {with dentist drill blaring in the background…}
Ever since writing my original post, I’ve had site owners reach out to see if they too can use AI-translated content to scale to other languages. If Reddit could do it, could they too? By the way, I’m referring to some large-scale sites with a footprint of 50-100M urls each. So their decision is an important one that comes with a lot of risk. I’ll provide a site owner’s guide at the end of the post in case you are also in this situation.

The question reminds me of the incredibly tense scene in Marathon Man when Dustin Hoffman is being interrogated by the villain. Hoffman’s character really doesn’t know if it’s safe, but the villain has a very successful way of getting the information he wants. Let’s just say a fresh cavity and drill are involved… Well, site owners asking me if it was safe weren’t that aggressive, but I sort of felt like Dustin Hoffman for a bit. :)

So it’s a big decision, and one that could potentially cause big problems, if Google viewed their situation differently than Reddit’s AI-translated content. Again, that could be in the form of a manual action or a spam update hit. And neither are fun to have, especially the spam update hit (since it can take months after cleanup to see recovery – if the site recovers at all).

Google’s reaction, or lack thereof:
So how did Google respond to Reddit’s massive scaling via AI-translated content? Well, nothing happened. Nothing at all. Actually, all of that AI-translated content continues to surge across countries. And to add insult to injury, Reddit is doubling down on machine translation.

They covered this during their latest quarterly earnings results. They explained that even more languages are rolling out, and that their intention is to also have that content rank in Search. They have explained the Search piece before by the way, so it’s not like the translations are just for on-site users. They want people finding the AI-translated content ranking in Google. And rank it does.

And beyond that blog post, Reddit HEAVILY covered machine translation on its earnings call. They covered how they are expanding AI-translated content, on how it’s driving visibility growth for them, and even how Google is helping them with the project. Yes, they literally approached Google (I’m assuming based on their partnership) to ask if scaling via AI-translations would be ok. Google presumably said it’s fine and is helping them do that via Gemini. Reddit even said, “it’s totally sanctioned (by Google)”… Wow, you can listen to that part in the video below (at 37:38 in the video).

No comment from Google and taking a new journey in the “Gabeback Machine”:
Note, I reached out to Google for a comment about all of this after publishing my original post, but I don’t have anything official to share unfortunately. That said, I decided to take a closer look at Google’s newish “Scaled content abuse” spam policy. Maybe I was missing something that could give us a clue about why Google seems ok with Reddit using machine translation at scale.

And I also fired up the “Gabeback Machine” to see all the times I have documented what Google has explained about using machine translation to scale. Again, Google was NOT ok with auto-translating content for a long time. But to be honest, it’s more nuanced than a statement like that. Stick with me… this will all come together. :)

Below, I’ll cover both the “Scaled content abuse” spam policy and then what the “Gabeback Machine” yielded as I journeyed back in time. My hope is that this information can help site owners choose the safest path forward when it comes to AI-translated content (or machine translation in general).

Taking a closer look at “Scaled content abuse”. Is scaling via AI translations ok?
I’ll cover the history of Google’s view of auto-translating content soon, but let’s start with the spam policy that’s currently in place. Google announced the “Scaled content abuse” spam policy in March 2024 right when the March 2024 core update rolled out. In the policy, they specifically mention automated translations as something that could violate the policy. Notice I emphasized “could”.

Here is the second bullet from the policy:
“Scraping feeds, search results, or other content to generate many pages (including through automated transformations like synonymizing, translating, or other obfuscation techniques), where little value is provided to user.” So it’s not just about auto-translating content. It’s about doing that where little value is provided to the user.

In addition, the policy starts off by explaining that scaled content abuse is when many pages are generated for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings and not helping users. That’s super important to understand. If you have high-quality and valuable content that you are scaling to help users, then that would not fall under “Scaled content abuse”.

That said, “high quality” and “valuable” is nuanced, and site owners don’t always have a good feel for this when they are reviewing their own content. I’ll come back to this soon when I provide recommendations for site owners.

The next part of the policy says that “Scaled content abuse” is typically about creating large amounts of unoriginal content that provides little to no value to users, no matter how it’s created.

Again, it seems like Google is saying that a site owner with large amounts of original and valuable content CAN scale that content and it wouldn’t fall under “Scaled content abuse.” Again, it’s nuanced since it’s often hard to evaluate your own content. I’ll cover more about that soon.

And I wanted to mention the first bullet in the policy as well. It’s not about translations, but it is about using AI-generated content. Google explains that using AI tools to generate many pages without adding value for users would violate the spam policy. So again, if a site owner has many helpful and valuable pages that they want to translate via AI, maybe that doesn’t fit under the spam policy.

As you can see, the spam policy is more nuanced than most people think. And Google’s stance has also evolved over time with regard to auto-translating content (using machine translation – via AI or not).

On that note, below I’ll quickly cover my travels via the “Gabeback Machine” when researching Google’s stance on using machine translation (or AI-translated content). Then I’ll provide a bulleted list of recommendations for site owners that are thinking about following Reddit’s lead with AI-translated content.

Google’s evolving stance on using machine translation. Traveling through time via the “Gabeback Machine” to uncover past communications.
Google has a long history of addressing auto-translated content and their stance has evolved over time. After firing up the “Gabeback Machine”, I uncovered a number of shares of mine from the past, which obviously led to a number of articles on Search Engine Roundtable. Google’s comments date back to Matt Cutts, with more comments from John Mueller over time.

Below are a few quotes and examples that demonstrate Google’s stance over time. This is also why it’s important to take a very close look at your content, and from an outsider’s perspective, BEFORE choosing to scale via auto-translation.

First, up is John Mueller from 2010 explaining that using auto-translations via Google Translate can be against Google’s guidelines. He issued a warning to a site owner about just taking an auto-translated piece of content and publishing it on their site.

Next up is Matt Cutts from 2011 also explaining that Google Translate usage could be seen as spam. Matt published a YouTube video explaining that Google’s guidelines that apply to “auto-generated stuff can also apply to auto-translated text.” Matt emphasized that humans should be involved with editing the content and making sure it makes sense for users.

Traveling ahead via the “Gabeback Machine”, John Mueller in 2018 covered auto-translated spam again. But he did explain there’s a difference between site owners intending to spam the search results versus legitimate uses of translating content to get that information out to a wider international audience. Intent matters, which matches what the current “Scaled content abuse” spam policy explains.

From John: “So that’s something where I wouldn’t necessarily say that using translated content like that would be completely problematic but it’s more a matter of the intent and kind of the bigger picture (about) what they’re doing. If they’re essentially just spinning content and hoping that it ranks, then that that would be more of a problem for us.”

And zooming ahead to 2023 when Gizmodo started auto-translating articles to Spanish on their es.gizmodo.com subdomain. Gizmodo was taking their articles published in English and auto translating the content to Spanish via AI. But it’s important to understand the original articles were legitimate articles written by their editors and writers. So this wouldn’t fall under “Scaled content abuse” based on the current spam policy.

As of today, I see about 7K articles with that label indexed. And that’s out of 115K total indexed on the subdomain (about 6% of indexed content on the subdomain). So it’s not a huge amount of articles that have been translated either.

And when checking search visibility for the subdomain, it’s surging recently. Here is Semrush visibility for Spain and Mexico for the es subdomain of Gizmodo. So Google seems to be ok with the use of AI-translated content on Gizmodo as well. And again, this makes sense based on what Google has explained in its “Scaled content abuse” spam policy.

So, is it safe? A cautionary guide for site owners navigating AI-translated content (or machine translation in general):

• First, it’s important to understand there is no clear answer about this. I’ll cover more about objectively reviewing your own content for quality and value soon, but that’s what it comes down to in my opinion. And I believe Google feels the same way based on how the “Scaled content abuse” spam policy was crafted. Therefore, I can’t possibly tell you via this post if it’s safe for you to scale via AI-translated content without having in-depth knowledge of your content, your site, how you created your content, and more.
• Second, remember that Google’s “Scaled content abuse” spam policy specifically states that abuse is when many pages are generated for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings and not helping users. It’s not about scaling high-quality and valuable content to other languages. This is probably why Reddit has avoided a manual action (or spam update hit).
• Next, the “Scaled content abuse” spam policy specifically mentions auto-translating content and says it’s about generating many pages where little value is provided to users. So again, it’s not about high-quality and valuable content when it comes to machine translation. It’s about low-quality content being scaled…
• And regarding AI-generated content, the “Scaled content abuse” policy also mentions that using generative AI tools to generate many pages without adding value for user would violate the policy. They are not saying all AI-generated translations would.
• Next, Reddit explained in its quarterly earning call that they approached Google to see if it was ok to use AI-translated content to scale internationally. Google said it was ok and is even helping them via Gemini. Reddit even said, “it’s totally sanctioned (by Google”… That’s super-interesting and I’m assuming this collaboration is based on their official partnership.
• That said, if you are thinking about following Reddit and auto translating your content via AI, then you still need to make sure you will not run afoul of Google’s “Scaled content abuse” spam policy. Make sure you decide to scale high-quality and valuable content and NOT low-quality or thin content. And yes, you might be too close to your own content to evaluate “quality”. I highly recommend running user studies to gauge what real people think about your content BEFORE pulling the trigger and auto translating your content via AI. I would aim to get a group of unbiased, third-party users to review your content so you can better understand if it’s truly high quality and helpful.
• Next, DO NOT simply scale AI-generated content to other languages. If you are pumping out a ton of AI-generated content in one language via some tool and then choosing to scale that content via AI-translations, then I think you are going to run into serious trouble with Google. That might be via a manual action for “Scaled content abuse” or via a future spam update (which is algorithmic). So again, make sure your core content that you choose to scale is high quality and helpful.
• And finally, before moving forward with any auto-translating strategy, make sure you understand the difference between manual actions and spam updates. Manual actions are applied by the webspam team at Google (via humans). You will have the opportunity to address those problems and file reconsideration requests via Google Search Console. At that point, you can go back and forth with the webspam team to better understand what the core problems are and why you received a manual action (and you can make your case if you feel the webspam team was wrong). That’s very different from spam updates, which are algorithm updates rolled out from time to time to address loopholes in the search results. For example, you can read my post about the December 2024 spam update (which was a big spam update that impacted a number of sites across the web). If you are impacted by a spam update, you will need to significantly improve the situation before recovery is possible. But recovery can take months, or longer, since Google will need to see your spam situation greatly improved over the long term. And by the way, there is no guarantee that you ever recover from a spam update. BEWARE.

Summary: Be very careful with your approach to using machine translation (and AI-translations).
So there you have it. Reddit is surging with AI-translated content and Google hasn’t taken action (and maybe for good reason based on their current “Scaled content abuse” spam policy). I’ve received a lot of questions from site owners looking to follow Reddit’s lead with mass-translating their content into other languages via AI. It’s a murky topic since it relies on site owners accurately and objectively evaluating their own “quality” levels. And in my experience helping many sites over the years with recovery from broad core updates, I don’t think many can objectively do that. Many are just too close to their own content.

Therefore, if you want to scale via AI-translations, then definitely seek assistance from objective third-party users. Then heavily review their feedback before taking action and scaling via AI translations. And that’s especially the case if you are planning to auto-translate a lot of content (like thousands, tens of thousands, or millions of urls).

Good luck.

GG

The post Is it safe? Does Google’s evolving view of auto-translated content, and lack of action with Reddit’s AI translations, open the floodgates for site owners? first appeared on The Internet Marketing Driver.