For the past week, we've been discussing how most of the third-party tracking tools have been showing much calmer and cooler search ranking volatility. This is all while the chatter within the SEO community still seems super heated. The reason may be that Google has been deploying new and more advanced blocking mechanisms towards these SEO tools.
So far I have one representative from a tool provider confirm the issue. Tomek Rudzki from Ziptie, that does advanced Google AI Overview monitoring, has shown a decline in AI Overviews. Glenn Gabe and I noticed and Tomek responded to us on X saying, "We've observed a decrease (approximately 2 percentage points) in AIO detection rates through Ziptie's tracking system. It seems Google is blocking AIO checkers in a smart way, far beyond traditional captchas."
We've observed a decrease (approximately 2 percentage points) in AIO detection rates through Ziptie's tracking system. It seems Google is blocking AIO checkers in a smart way, far beyond traditional captchas. We are looking for ways to improve the AIO detection rate.
— Tomek Rudzki (@TomekRudzki) January 16, 2025
I emailed a bunch of other SEO toolsets last night, asking if they are noticing the same issue but I have yet to hear back on the record yet. But I've been hearing that this is more widespread than just AI Overviews and just Ziptie.
this seems to be a wider issue with other tracking tools too cc @TomekRudzki
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) January 16, 2025
Tomek added, "We are looking for ways to improve the AIO detection rate." And maybe some tools are able to handle this already but again, the tools are mostly all showing calming, even through today.
This is all while the the chatter continues to be super heated.
SEO Chatter
Here is some new chatter from here and WebmasterWorld - as you can see, it is pretty heated:
Big drop...
Huge drop here...
feels like a penalty was added to our page. So far we are at 66%. Some good sales with organic traffic today but amazon sales are at a new high today. I would say it is time to say good by Google....
Let's be honest, Google is definitely running an update. The fluctuations are just too extreme.
Last ~7 days have seen some mildly positive trends for a change (after 3 awful Google updates in a row). But I don't think this trend will last much longer, if at all.
I've had strong traffic this week again...a small dip one day but it recovered. You can easily see when google is updating these days, the pattern is always the same. A sudden freeze in traffic and usually the biggest drop is in USA / Canada traffic.
Yesterday was a good day, lets say "normal" day with some good sales. Since yesterday 7:30pm we see a sharp drop and today we started at 39% from normal traffic.
Another day of massive drops here.
They are at it again, huge gaps in orders but same volume of traffic! With other words zombies!
My global traffic this month so far has been consistently steady at about 60% of my 2024 average, in fact I have not had ONE day so far achieving my 2024 average which I find utterly unbelievable.However I have had a couple of genuine bulk enquiries from possible new clients, neither of them in the West, but what I have experienced this week especially is a massive increase in spam email, has anyone else?.
Since the festive holiday is now over every single day has been a slow but consistent drop in traffic. Yesterday was a -13% drop. Day before -14%. Yet during the holiday it was nice and steady and at +50%. What is going on? So tired of the inconsistent traffic. Soon it will be back to August levels once again.
Google Rank Tracking Tools Calming...
But the tools are still showing calming and less volatility which goes against what the chatter is showing me:
Eric Mercier posted about this also on his Spanish SEO blog, so others are noticing this too. Natalia Witczyk posted on LinkedIn and wrote:
Fresh in: Google starts intensifying its anti-scraping measures, introducing stricter protections such as IP blocking and CAPTCHAs. Popular SEO tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs are being impacted.This move from Google is making data extraction more challenging and costly. As a result, users may face higher subscription fees.
Any of you seeing data issues in your SEO tools?
Patrick Stox from ahrefs, a popular tracking tools, responded to that LinkedIn post saying:
"Ahrefs are being impacted" <- Can you provide evidence to that statement? I'm seeing fresh data and able to pull fresh SERPs. What I'm not seeing are complaints from customers.
There are a lot of comments around some of the tools having issues over the past several days on social media and other platforms. So far, Ziptie is the only tool provider to confirm it but it is super early and maybe others will chime in too. Again, I reached out to a number and will keep you posted on what they say.
We use GSC 😇
— DEJAN (@dejanseo) January 17, 2025
PS: This has nothing to do with rank trackers specifically and all to do with LLM training data scrapers.
— DEJAN (@dejanseo) January 17, 2025
This comment makes sense to me.
Meanwhile, Google does still seem super volatile despite what the tools are showing.
Google has never been a fan of tools scraping them, and has issued warnings in the past. But most tool providers have been able to work around Google's blocking efforts.
That being said, what are you all seeing? (I am posting this early because I am in a different time zone.)
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and LinkedIn.
Update: Shay Harel from Similarweb sent the following statement:
On the night of January 15th, Google implemented significant changes to how its systems handle automated interactions. These updates temporarily disrupted rank tracking and SERP data solutions across the industry, including ours, as many existing configurations were rendered non-functional.The changes introduced new requirements for interaction protocols, invalidating previously reliable methods and causing widespread service interruptions. At Similarweb, we rapidly adapted by identifying the root cause and deploying updates within 18 hours to restore full functionality.
This update also deprecated certain configurations, such as ads_mode: ON, which was commonly used for analyzing paid results. The shift to requiring more dynamic session handling adds complexity and raises concerns about potential depersonalization of results. These changes highlight Google's ongoing efforts to refine its ecosystem and introduce stricter controls.
The scale of this event was unprecedented, even compared to major disruptions in 2018. It reinforces the importance of technical agility and innovation in delivering reliable data solutions for the SEO industry.
More:
Google is trying to block scraping of their results, here are some statements from French Seo tools, there was another change for the 2nd day in a row :https://t.co/yZhl4pzFlShttps://t.co/ZM52uJYXSxhttps://t.co/INu9BmRQMc
— Damien - Building Free Ahrefs/Semrush alternative (@DamienLusson) January 17, 2025
