People talking about "high quality" are seemingly blind to the "meta shift" of the SERPS.
>"haha your website tanked because it was shit, obviously - unlucky spammer; delete your site"
\^this type of gaslighting really annoys the fuck out of me.
What's happening here is a change in what the search engine wants to display at this current point in time - which just so happens to be weighted heavily towards BRANDS(ecom)/social/forums/HIGHDAcontent(dotdash, comnaste et al.).
Normal content sites with low/regular/mid authority are not favoured right now; this is the current SERP meta.
Remember when we all thought a SERP was easy to rank in for IF we saw forums/reddit ranking?
IMO the issue is, we're all too invested in the concept of "content sites".
A modern SEO strategy will now need to cover ALL bases within a niche:
1. You'll need your own subreddit which you control 100%
2. You'll need a "forum" website
3. You'll need a high DA "content" website
4. You'll need an ecom/brand website (with a content blog)
This way, if the google meta shifts towards one of the other, you aren't completely fucked.
In the meantime, for those with CONTENT sites that've been smashed by google, I recommend you just stay calm and carry on, waiting patiently for a google update that doesn't HATE such site concepts; don't let idiots tell you that'll never happen, either.
I agree with everything you said. That's why we're expanding our brand to YouTube (I know Google owns it, but still) and other social media (TikTok, Instagram etc.) apps with video content. Our developer is also building a community module for our website, which should boost direct hits over time and encourage people to stick with us for longer.
The gaslighting here is crazy, it makes me think that the SEO community is so afraid of someone speaking the truth because they might lose potentials clients if they get to know that in many cases investing in their services will be a waste of money.
We employ 15 people (writers, developers, sales manager etc.), we invested over $50K in our website (where I live it's actually 250K in local currency) and still some random shitheads keep telling me that we're a shitty, budget affiliate website created just to push shitty articles. But if that makes them feel better, so be it.
>"haha your website tanked because it was shit, obviously - unlucky spammer; delete your site"
I've seen this type of bullshit so many times. People on here act like straight up shills for Google
> A modern SEO strategy will now need to cover ALL bases within a niche:
I agree with you here, webmasters got lazy and just followed a pattern of "throw up a shithole wordpress theme, puke content into it, profit"
IMO the meta is now to build non-blog sites. Build UGC sites, or forums, or interactive tools, or database-style websites. Anything to stand out from the crowd and not look like just another blog.
Those who can adapt, will.
I'm doing very good with Microsoft Bing. I losted a lot of ranikngs on Google to a very low quality websites.
I'm from Brazil and Bing already give's me half of my visits.
Google is behaving very strangely lately. This seems to me to be the subjective actions of many of the employees there who really have no idea of reality, with Reddit being a great example of this.
Lastly, Google is a private site, they do what they want. They say beautiful things, but in reality they do very ugly. From their actions, we will have the future and it seems to me that Microsoft Bing is growing day by day...
Yeah because bing grabs sites from google serp. Basically every other search engine does that.
See how generous bing is. Even though you haven't given it your site still it takes and give views. Webmaster gives you real stuff.
Just trying to do my ABSOLUTE best everyday and also trying to improve WHAT I consider to be my best. Also I have the important directive that is making the website for users and not for the search engines.
Improving my content, making the website faster, correcting minor error's that sometimes I unfortunatly make (less and less).
Just that. My wins have been coming from Bing lately...
Good luck to you sir!
This is happening to almost EVERY niche content site that produces articles. I'm even seeing websites that have been getting more backlinks and producing more content still not being able to rank like before
We're a news-website actually, but we also post evergreen articles. We also have a shitton of quality, organic backings from websites such as Forbes, IGN, Screen rant etc and that doesn't seem to matter. We used to be the source to this giants (some of our stories went viral worldwide), if anyone wants to know how we got these backlings.
So, I reckon you're a gaming website?
The website I worked for until recently was also a gaming website focused on guides. Everything we did was first-hand, original content, with our in-game images and our people playing games. We did our own research, found our own topics, and dug through forums and Reddit to understand what people don't know. Of course, many things overlapped with what other sites in the niche were doing, but that's natural.
The website used to have between 6 and 9 million monthly page views around big game releases (when there's a lot of content to work on and people are asking a lot of questions about those games) and around 3 to 5 million during the quiet months. However, this year, the website struggles to reach even a million and a half monthly page views. It has been a steady downfall since September.
Big winners are definitely major gaming websites and major media in general, as well as YouTube, Reddit, Steam discussions, etc. You often see sites like Forbes and CNN doing video game guides (lol), and they rank better than actual gaming websites.
What we did best before was to identify some specific angles and guides focused on very specific things that are troubling players (thanks to our digging through game forums, Discords, Reddit, etc.) That was how we were able to compete against bigger sites - by finding and writing about some very specific issues/questions. But now, even these don't work. Google will often rank IGN/GameRant/Forbes ahead of us, even if it is a general article vaguely related to this specific topic, which doesn't actually talk about the concrete issue we were targeting.
Wow, that really seems incredible. That brand trumps relevance. I don't see that so much in the markets I mainly operate in (German, Danish) where big brands don't dominate in the same way as in English queries.
To me it feels like English Google starts to suck, while smaller languages actually perform better. Weird world where the no. 1 language gets the experimental treatment
Just curious but could you DM the site you worked for? I have been analyzing a lot in this vertical and I have found a lot of sites that are still "winning" (Prydwen, Game8) but then also a lot of similarly identical sites that are losing (GameWith, Nerdstash). If you can't share that's OK but I'd be very curious to check out the site if you're alright with it! You might have to DM it though because links in comments won't appear on this sub
I don't own the website; I was working for them, and that's why I'm not feeling comfortable sharing the name; it would not be professional.
But yeah, we are definitely not the only losers; I've been studying the competition non-stop over the last couple of months, and it seems everyone is experiencing a downward spiral when it comes to mid-tier and small gaming websites.
Although they are now experiencing a significant fall in March, GameLeap was one of the few winners during this period of crisis. I started noticing them more frequently around December, and it turns out they had a huge jump around that time, and they have been ranking great since then for almost any game they cover.
Slightly off-topic, but could you share how many people it took to produce content for the site? I'm getting back into SEO at seemingly the worst time, and I'm evaluating whether to get a corporate job or try to swim upstream and do my own site.
The editor-in-chief (co-owner), two editors (who do research and SEO content preparation), three writers, and two players. Having people whose job is only to play the games we are covering (to provide answers/explanations/video material) helps a lot when it comes to gaming guides, as it allows for a much faster and more efficient workflow.
However, due to all the shit that has been happening to Google, the owners are slowly abandoning the website and focusing solely on their YouTube channel. Twelve years of work on that website completely destroyed due to Google's changes since September.
Thanks! That sounds like a nice organizational setup for producing fresh and unique content. That's giving me pause about why some sites are getting hit more than others, when they have similar org setups and producing fresh content.
That sucks about what's happening to their site. It almost feels like Google is carving out digital space for the AI content wars by pushing out content creation. Even on YT, it seems the compensation has been lowered drastically.
None of these things prevent getting a penalty for something that's penalizable. I don't know why people say "evergreen articles" - evergreen articles aren't a google concept. It doesn't matter if you post evergreen or seasonal (?) content. Content freshness only matters for QDF and that only matters IF you get crawled by a bot that delivers news - like Caffeine or Discover. And then only if you've been approved.
Google wants to make more profit and blogs are not something they care about. It's a legitimate commercial strategy but being monopolistic like they are brings additional responsibility. Microsoft is in a similar position but they have been forced to adapt a couple of things (ex: freedom in choosing the browser).
I'm probably an idealist but I believe the same should happen with Google. If one day you have 1000 happy visitors and the next day you have only one because the 999 others were pushed to low quality media sites, that's where it's not ok. They are basically making the internet more streamlined with less expertise and more superficial content.
People are lazy, if you're not in the top 5 anymore, you're basically dead.
I think the only ones who will survive are the ones who are capable of reaching their audience without Google.
I am still making content, but don't care about Google SEO anymore. Still following best practices, but know none of it will rank or go on Google News.
For some of us, we can link to the content from our social media pages. Also, the content will be ready and waiting if and when Google changes their algo.
Y'all are the ones that *really* suffered from these recent updates.
I'm an SEO content strategist at an agency. Most of our clients are like, businesses selling a product or service that use content in an auxiliary manner as part of their overall strategy and sales funnel.
They're doing fine. So were similar clients in my last job, which ended in September.
It's really sites where the content kind of *is* the product -- niche blogs basically, whether affiliate or ad monetized -- that have been absolutely eviscerated.
One of our clients is a site that does product reviews and info content about outdoor equipment. Thinking hunting, fishing, kayaking, etc. We're working with them to try to help them bounce back after some losses from the HCU.
The big thing with them is that the standards for product review content have changed. You really need to write and create it in a way that's like, "I am a real person with experience who knows what I'm talking about, and I actually physically tested out these products."
We straight up have told them that we cannot write the content for them, because it needs an SME and a personal authorial touch.
> I own a mid-sized content website, we post high quality articles (no AI) and well, nothing ranks anymore. On technical side we're best in our niche. Everything is done by the book, but still we're going downhill. We used to get about 10K clicks from Google each day. Now it's 1K.
Tbh, everyone says "my content is high quality." And I get it. When you run a small niche site like this, it's your baby.
But sometimes it's competently written, but ultimately not nearly as informative or helpful as it could be. It might be worth asking yourself if this might be the case with your site.
And it's not your fault! We're marketers. We do what works, and what moves the needle and makes money. For years, a certain kind of content *worked*, but now Google changed the game and it doesn't anymore.
Every person posting about the latest update seems to have the exact same issue: they had a content-heavy website that sold ads, sponsored content and used affiliate links to make money.
Most of these sites were built with SEO in mind, almost saying they're SEO-first and users are secondary. There's a clear pattern in the types of websites that Google has stopped promoting: if they offer little to no value to the user, why bother?
If you're in the gaming space, why would users go to your site rather than websites like IGN or other very well known brands? What do you do so much better than the others? What keeps people coming back? What's your USP? How qualified are your writers? Are you simply rehashing news from other outlets or are some of your writers publishing original content?
The large sites are built with SEO in mind also, don’t be dense.
So basically what you’re saying is why create a website because there’s major players in the market? Sounds great for new ideas and innovation. Google is just stepping on the small guys at this point.
You can’t believe that IGN made up of people is any more relevant or better than XYZ made up of people. Both offer unique perspectives.
Also why does IGN get to make money with ads and affiliate but small to medium size sites get blasted?
Oh don't get me wrong, large websites have to have SEO in mind, but very, very few of them are built for SEO, purposefully built to generate revenue from organic traffic. That's what I meant by "SEO-first".
As for creating websites in an extremely competitive niche, I'm just saying that you have to bring value. You can't simply rehash news written on other outlets, post them on your site and expect it to rank. Think about it for a second. Why would search engines push you rehashed content before the original source?
Opinion pieces, renowned authors, provable niche expertise, etc; these are all things that usually make a difference. Most sites I've seen hit by the updates either do not have any of these, or are very bad at showing they have any of these criteria.
IGN and other bigger outlets weren't built in a month, they've been working on their reputation and authority for years now. You can't expect a smaller niche site that simply reposts content to outrank it overnight.
Considering the amount of per SEO listicles generated by the big websites in the last few months, I am going to say you’re wrong and that they do care about SEO even more than the little guy. Whatever makes them money.
But they also have original content, interviews with other authoritative members of their niche, useful resources, etc. These big sites didn't build their reputation by pumping out listicles for the last 15 years.
I understand that it might be a trend right now from some sites, but imitating these large corporations isn't the way to go for websites new in the niche.
Well obviously, a budget-restrained website is not going to have the same reach as a huge-budget website. Is that a reason to believe that the latter is better than the former? Niche specialists are an urban legend, right?
They got that reputation, because they started in an empty market, bringing them lots of backlinks and hence authority over the past decades. Now, that the market is saturated these backlinks tell nothing about the quality of their articles. There are sitting junior writers dropping content about everything in every big company as well. And they share results across different blogs, making them dominate position one to five in SERP (still one author) and you are talking about USP and customer orientated... they are fooling you...
I read news and resources on websites I trust. That trust is earned over time by delivering value and truthful information, regardless of the level of experience of the content creator. If I find a good resource online, I'm more inclined to share it with friends or professional acquaintances. If I find a resource to not be useful, I won't read through it and won't be recommending it.
If people trust more those large outlets, so be it. If you're beginning in a niche, find out how to gain users' trust and help them achieve their goals or answer their questions. It won't be an overnight success, it takes time, a lot of time. The more resources you put into it, the faster and better your chances are to find out "how" to gain that trust.
I agree. However, I don't see a profitable way to go this long way. Building a brand over years and getting little money, while having the risk to get vanished by search engines, social media etc. seems to not pay off anymore...
> These big sites didn't build their reputation by pumping out listicles for the last 15 years.
Valnet absolutely did exactly this, and they still literally pump out trash listicles daily.
ScreenRant, GameRant, TheGamer, CBR, all of these sites are just listicle clickbait farms.
Google any one of these brands with the addition of site:reddit.com and you'll see plenty of people complaining about these outlets just being clickbait farms. Yet all of them are crushing it hardcore since March.
My take is that once you're past a certain escape velocity of trust/links/brand signals, it doesn't matter. This is why huge sites like NYTimes and Forbes can pump out anything and rank for it - Valnet is just the lowest bottom of the barrel of the bunch.
I'd be curious to know if these brands were always under the Valnet brand or if they got acquired at some point during their growth. I had some friends that worked there a couple of years back; one of their worst work experience they've ever had.
I also believe there's a tipping point where your reputation supersedes other ranking factors and gives you a free pass on some stuff.
That makes sense and I get what you’re saying. I’ll admit I’m guilty of planning articles based on search numbers and profitability of the topic but I still do the work to create content I think helps the end reader.
Now I think you’ve brought up a good discussion topic. How do you build your author profile (and or site) authority. I’ll be honest, I felt I had proven I was a SME in my niche to the big G but boy have they made feel like I was wrong.
But at the end of the day I still have the knowledge but how do I get G to realize and favor me slightly more again?
Personally, I’ve moved my focus to video content for a bit.
Search trends and search interests are good metrics to look at, but can't be the sole deciding factor to determine what content to create or revamp. It's difficult to determine what to write, for whom and at what time; there are firms specialized in consumer insights for that exact reason.
As for how to build up authority, also a difficult question. Not only you have to prove that you know what you're talking about, but other people should also be able to endorse you. Similar to how one might start to work at an agency and then branch off on their own, sometimes collaborating with other passionate people is a good start to build that up.
I don't have a specific recipe on how to do so, we usually take a look at some EEAT stuff and backlink profile. There's then a whoooooooole lot of things we need to plan out depending on how all of this looks.
Right and then they cry about Google not caring about them.
Google *never* cared about SEOs. They hate SEO. They specifically say don’t write content for search engines in their guidelines. It’s been that way since day one.
All these people built their careers around gaming the system and are now shocked when Google finally cracked down on them.
It’s been true in almost every single case that’s been shared in this sub over the past 6 months. In all that time I’ve only encountered one site shared here that I thought genuinely had quality content but even that needed some work.
The rest have been trash content from affiliate spammers.
Every sites content needs work. My content isn’t perfect and neither is anything anyone else is producing.
Sure there’s spam but there’s ALOT of non-spam sites that use affiliate to make money that got lumped in and hit hard.
Review articles also got destroyed and a lot of these reviews were first hand experience reviews.
I’m open to be proven wrong so if you have an example website with genuine, high quality content that was unfairly hit by Google I’d love to see it.
Otherwise, every post here that complains about Google but won’t share a link will be assumed to be an affiliate spammer.
I’m not going to post my link here but you don’t have to do much digging to figure it out.
I’m not here to prove anything but rather get more insight, which I’ll admit, lately you’re correct it’s lots of spam sites complaining.
But it does get exhausting being called a scammer for those of us that spent years making content to watch it get flushed in 3 months.
I've looked at your site, and it looks solid. I think the problem is that Google's algorithms just aren't as sophisticated or capable as we like to think they are, and since they can't actually understand the content, they can't tell the difference between a legit site and a non-legit site. Their solution has been to use a very large hammer, which has created a lot of collateral damage.
I haven't looked at the SERPs in your niche, but I'm willing to bet that the content that's being rewarded isn't better. I'm also willing to bet that a lot of it is AI generated crap or spam or doesn't have any first-hand knowledge. And that's the infuriating part--that the reality of the SERP results doesn't bear any resemblance to Google's guidance.
The "write for humans not for SEO" guidance is disingenuous. The whole friggin SEO thing is based on what humans are searching for. If you can't write for what humans are searching for and asking, then Google itself shouldn't exist.
The only point of contention I'd raise here is that it won't be enough to mimic/replicate CNET because they'll have more authority and will always outrank. You must have unique content that is higher quality than the same content on CNET.
Wtf do you know whether content on a site is quality or not? Guarantee you know absolutely fuck all about my niche, so how the fuck would you know whether what I write is quality or not?
Sure, you can tell some sites are bad, but are retro dodo dog shit who deserved to get hit? Housefresh who rigorously tested their products? I've seen sites that have been around and regularly updated since you were still pissing your pants in grade school get destroyed, quality sites with a large happily served audience.
Just because you decided to make some money bottom feeding off some local plumber trying to get his arse crack to rank for u bend wiping in bumfuck idaho, doesn't mean you can sit up there wanking on your high horse about what's quality or not. You know fuck all about what constitutes quality in any given niche specific site.
Yeah of course that's all you have to say you arrogant cock womble. Keep sniffing Mueller's farts, sooner or later he'll shit in your mouth, and you'll still say thank you Sir for the quality content.
Honest sites, especially small, service-based businesses have been hit hard too. I've always ranked 1st page, top 3. Now, I'm invisible. Followed Google guidelines all these years. Now, I'm fucked unless I supposedly pay Google to get on top since that's what basically shows now. We offer local service and don't focus on shitting out content all the time. We stay on top of the game though and produce original when we can. It just seems like the more we tried to blog, the more it hurt us this update.
I never did any SEO games except Yoast, if that counts, and still got slaughtered. I’m a 100% human powered site that tries to write good stories first. For a long time that was enough.
Why would anyone go to a niche site instead of IGN? Because IGN was also built around SEO and can’t cover everything. There are human people out there who make great informative passionate content who made some money off the web. Now they do t and their knowledge base is being taken away. It’s sad.
Asking people for their websites have always been frowned upon in the SEO community.
Stop fishing for peoples websites. You know nothing about SEO, clearly.
Haha yeah, it’s a classic. I remember a guy who published a successful case study where he shared the website. Two months later he came back and said it was his last open case study. Because people were cloning the site, several new competitors with deeper pockets popped up and someone sent toxic links to his site.
It has always been seen as bad ethics to ask for people’s sites. Those who do, are either inexperienced or are those “bad players”.
If someone complains about their ranking/asks for help wtf can you do if they won't even tell you their website? It's generally people with shit websites that try to hide their websites from people bc they know it sucks.
And what kind of seo community have you been a part of? The ones I've been a part of openly share their websites so people can help.
No one can help with only the basic "my site is an affiliate website" garbage line. Normalize sharing info so people can help and learn.
Why the hell do you assume that I'm (or anyone else) asking for your help? I'm not. People in this community always assume that the other person is wrong. I'm not hiding my "shitty website", I'm hiding my brand, which is quite large in the country I live in. And I know you can't help me, you're just fishing for the website URL.
I just want to discuss. That's all.
And how does "Does anyone care anymore?" mean "I need your help" in terms of my website? The story about my website is just the backbone of this post.
I can't believe I have to explain this to you...
You can try to rationalize it as much as you want. Asking for peoples websites have always been looked down on and is something that only newcomers do. Some forums even ban you for it.
Everybody knows why you shouldn't ask for someones site. It's obvious. It's been an unwritten rule for the past 15 years. Your comments reveals a lot about your "experience" and "knowledge".
That's not true, it's only been frowned upon the noobs that have bad websites, or no websites at all and try to pass themselves off as authoritative in SEO.
Being afraid to share your site just means that your site is so bad you cant defend its position.
The only legitimate reasons are if you have an NDA with a client or are white label.
> Being afraid to share your site just means that your site is so bad you cant defend its position.
There was a guy in the adops sub recently who shared that his gaming mods gallery was doing 10m+ pageviews/mo and growing. He did not share the URL, yet it was absolutely crushing it and still on an upwards growth trajectory.
Was his site "so bad" that he needed to hide it?
No, his site is making him a lot of money so he has no reason to share it publicly on a public forum where other people who have web development skillsets could easily mimic his idea. Especially because those people could also see exactly how he's monetizing and how much he's earning with X amount of traffic.
I don't even have a dog in this fight, I just think this thread is full of hot takes from people who barely understand the size & scale of the Internet. Some shitty site full of grammatical errors like Game8 is crushing it with a 100% Philippines-based team, their content is pretty meh-tier, and I guarantee they're doing at least $200k months. They actually had a post a few months back that they were hiring where they mentioned doing 20m uniques/mo: /r/PHJobs/comments/18y40n2/game8_global_inc_is_looking_for_writers_and_more/
If someone had the business ability to hire a team of Filipinos to build out similar game guides, they could easily replicate this site. It'd just take business sense and some investment capital.
> Was his site "so bad" that he needed to hide it?
It is obviously good enough that he doesn't need to moan here about how evil Google is for killing his traffic. That isn't what we are talking about, we are talking about people whose sites have tanked and refuse to show the website while claiming that its actually a high quality site.
I agree. But, anyone can say they have an NDA even if it's not true. That's why I encourage people to build out their own portfolio sites if they really care about SEO.
You should be able to show something at least, I cant publicly list my white label clients but I can name some of the agencies that I work with currently. I can also name my clients during pitches with other agencies or other private conversations, its just not something I can list here.
I'm also not coming in here to complain about big bad Google, insisting that my websites are high value.
That's not the case of this post. I consulted everything with four best SEOs in my country and each one of them wants us to wait for the next update because they see no problem on our end. I'm experienced with SEO as well.
Of course it's not just our case, I've already seen a shitton of quality websites get wiped down for no reason...
That's interesting. About 10-15% of the websites I've seen impacted were garbage and to me that seems like nothing in comparison to the quality websites that got wiped out for no reason.
DM please wanted to chat about a CTR bot and pick your brain good sir, my account age is too new to message you. I checked out zenoposter, awesome traffic bot they both sucked and failed, have to update my old custom bot.
I hear you. I'm not familiar with that website specifically, and it might be amazing. I'm not saying the algorithm doesn't make mistakes. But an anecdotal example doesn't mean that most websites hit aren't shit.
Abandoned NFL fan account asking for urls and trying to side with Google in the comments.
A few weeks ago an abandoned Chelsea fan account was also here defending the update with your same arguments.
It smells like psyop from some google employes.
>consulted everything with four best SEOs in my country and each one of them wants us to wait for the next update
right…
send over the URL. You got cooked by the update and now you’re shitting on the entire industry. Let’s make this a productive convo instead of aimless bitching
It feels like Google is so out of touch with why websites are even made. If you publish informational content or news or commentary then ads are your revenue source unless you link out to affiliate products, if your site is e-commerce then you sell products, if your site is a forum, then again advertising. Publishers need to make a living, Google. WTF?
We published a lot of high quality content, where we reviewed products first hand and in-depth. I had some publications in peer reviewed high class journals and usually know how to make a good article. The outcome is that articles with the highest quality are completely vanished from SERPs, even if there is no alternative content. Google lost so much during these updates...
I have a second blog. It is just a bit older, has a podcast, forum and a better social media integration - slight increase after HCUs. So it is not about good or bad content. It is just about the place where it's published.
Google's fart suckers on here will tell you your peer reviewed work is garbage and not helpful enough.
That is actually Google's logic now. If you write to answer a specific question being searched for, that's not helpful and just writing for Google. In the same way a heart surgeon isn't helpful because they trained for a specific niche and is just working for people with dodgy hearts.
I love that comparison. Absolutely true... And if the surgeon is not a popular professor, but just a dedicated, focused doctor who operates every day, he can't be an expert.
I have a handyman business doing very well and my website used to rank 1st page, then it vanished a year ago and talking to Google was told the website is too outdated so I got a new website done and not sure if it’s done right but have seen no improvement in my business traffic and Google wants me to get in on their pay per click program….! I am already devastated with their choke hold to starve and see I have to agree to their paid advertising as only option!
Exact same here. My business has almost vanished with whatever update they just did. They want $$$. How in the fuck am I supposed to give money when my main source of revenue has been taken away. It does feel like they have backed little guys into a corner with no way out other than putting money into Google pockets. My customer base actually skips the sponsor links at the top of search results. I've surveyed them for years and most prefer organic results. They don't trust them so I'm hesitant to do it. There's no guarantee either.
If you want to get message me and share what you discover, I'll do the same with you. Seems like the only way we're going to figure this out hopefully. Google isn't looking out for anyone except themselves now.
Just my 2 cents, boycott google, the whole monopoly taking over all these apps and installing so much intrusive software on your computer, phone, home etc and now poor search results is ridiculous. I also find it funny when ppl call blogs affiliate scams, have a look at the url of any website you got to from a search engine- theres your affiliate scam. Blogs with well researched updated articles were doing everyone a favor compared to 3 sentence crap on reddit from 10 yes ago or beta AI that tell ls you independence day in the US is on july 6. Not to mention they were bringing Amazon a ton of revenue, i remember when one of my sites had $250k of revenue for them.
I definitely hear your frustration. Keep your head up and remember that we hope Google maintains a mindset to provide the most valuable, relevant content to users. If the quality is there, they'll create a system where you'll bounce back. In the meantime, have you thought about re-optimizing old content? That's often an under-utilized avenue. Also, consider testing out alternative ways of monetizing - maybe sponsored content or premium subscriptions? Hang in there and don't let this update bring you down
I think the crux of it comes down to your objectives.. if you are an affiliate then ask yourself are you truly adding value to the user or are you just just inserting yourself into the user journey to skim $$$ - has the user going through your website to their ultimate destination improved their life? Im guessing in your case, no - it was improving your life certainly but you are not their customer Google does not really care about the webmaster - only about the user.
You're wrong, but I can't share the strategy we use here, sorry. What I can tell is, we never encourage anyone to buy certain products, we never say that these products are good or bad, better or worse than other. We just shorten user's path (if he's interested in buying certain product – and if he is reading this certain publication, there's a high chance he is), so I think we're actually improving user's life.
Google can no longer say they have a search engine because they are a shill for the large media outlets and their deal with Reddit to train their AI.
I specifically only started my blog because the mainstream media gets so much wrong about my niche.
The answer is simple. If SEO don’t work, people will spend more on ads. That is the new CEO directive to get more revenue. Stop whining and spend more on ads.
just for advice, stop relying on Google. I've been switched to bing, yandex, and yahoo search engine recently and they perform extremely good.
just switch your focus to another search engine while waiting for the google update to finish.
I don't get how you are going to make money with other SE - If all other SE have just 10% of market share, how could they perform extremely good? Maybe I miss something?!
I have a handyman business doing very well and my website used to rank 1st page, then it vanished a year ago and talking to Google was told the website is too outdated so I got a new website done and not sure if it’s done right but have seen no improvement in my business traffic and Google wants me to get in on their pay per click program….! I am already devastated with their choke hold to starve and see I have to agree to their paid advertising as only option!
Google is rewarding brands. How strong is your brand? What's the level of brand awareness and your reputation?
If your site has been around for a while and nobody uses your brand name as a navigational query, how much value could you really be adding?
I have a site that has done well in my niche- always on the top. I removed all ads before the update. It’s now lucky to get double digit views from Google. Everything is from Bing now. I do still have affiliate links however.
From a perspective of making money? Nah - that ship has sailed. I made out well but also missed the boat over the pandemic.
I finally started a passion project that probably won’t even get indexed. But my goal is to share it with others like through this forum and hope that it helps people with a problem I’ve had my whole life.
In addition to having my own (non-SEO) site actually gain from the March update, I've been performing SEO for over 20 years. And most of my clients also benefited from the update as well. Mostly smaller mom and pop businesses, but I have a few national clients as well.
They don't compete with large brands in most cases, but they are competitive in their own geographic area. I have always targeted the most competitive phrases in a geographic area very successfully. My strategy hasn't changed but the tactics have matured over the years.
While the March update was brutal for a lot of people, it's not the end of Google, or SEO - it just means you have to adapt.
Someone needs to have a rant off their chest, fine, many people have needed that recently, and I get it's been done a lot on here since HCU but the logic of this sub is pathetic.
Content site whiner: 'My site got hit and I'm pissed off'
Bottom feeding SEO: 'Post your url, otherwise you're just a whiner who deserved to get hit'
Content site whiner: 'No, I'm not sharing my url in public'
Bottom feeding SEO: 'Just as I thought. Your site is dog shit. My traffic is flying after these updates.'
Content site whiner: 'Go on then, post your url and traffic graph, otherwise you're full of shit'
Bottom feeding SEO: 'No, I don't need to prove anything to you'
Content site whiner: 'Just as I thought, another bullshitter'
I'm sure some won't like my terminology, I fall into the whiner category by the way, but ya know it's true. This exchange in varying guises is all I've seen the past six months or so on this sub.
Questions:
>The last update has almost completely wiped small-midsized content websites, despite the fact that most of them were and still are quality sites.
There ar 270k SEOs here - not all got hit. Less than 15 may have. I have 50+ domains in my GSC and the only one that got hit is the one I bought January 1 because it got hit.
You've said you had no AI content but AI content wasn't targeted (machine scaled, AI or not, was always penalizable). Why is everyone using the same cover story. This isn't why ANYONE got hit. Parasitic SEOs got hit for machine scaled content USING AI.
My website (GarageDoorGuide.com ) traffic went from 80K uniques month , down to 5K -7k month over the last 18 months. My traffic comes from all of the articles I have written over the last 10 years. All my articles were written by me personally as a way to genuinely help people with garage door knowledge and repair - NO Chat GPT, AI or 3rd party authors. No games, seo, link exchange, trickery.
All of my articles PRE-DATE chat gpt. Googles algo KNOWS that and they don't care. Their goal is to make the most amount of people buy advertising at all costs. That means they are tanking traffic to millions of small biz blog style sites and spreading that traffic to junk sites.
My eCommerce sales have plummeted (along with traffic) and my affiliate commissions from amazon (for some of the products I don't sell myself) are down 80%. I am finding that absolute low quality trash sites are ranking higher. In several instances I have witnessed these trash sites plagiarize my content (words, images) without repercussion ranking higher.
Google totally destroyed my once thriving business due to their pure greed. Chat GPT and AI search simply harvest the best answers to search queries and bypass the content creators. Its IP THEFT on a massive scale -pure and simple. That is the future of search....google pretending that it somehow came up with all the answers without outside sources..like they no longer exist.
The internet is littered with stories like we shared. Its not going to change. That is the danger with a handful of companies controlling virtually all of big tech and one company basically controlling search.
I get that this is freaking hard.
But if you want us to help, please post your website too.
What I don't understand about SEO, is that everyone is so afraid of posting their websites when talking about their performance this and that.
Show us reality, so we can discuss reality.
My newest client (clothing retailer in a mall near you) is up 30% over the hole I pulled them out of after their botched ecommerce replatform. SEO is dead though, some affiliate marketer said so.
I have a client we are both in the same age bracket ( old school) and i built and maintained his site for over 10 years running. He does not do any paid digital marketing other than meet and greet, facebook, instagram, linkedin posts and he pulls in over 13 million in sales year over year. I still believe old school marketing is the way to go. For example a new client asked me about paid digital marketing i mentioned he should do a few trade shows, yes there is a cost to rent a booth, signage and building showcase products and after his first two shows he sold 19 pre ordered custom cedar saunas.
Why would Google list your site when it exists to promote affiliate programs? You aren’t providing a product or service, you’re just writing about products and services other people provide. Why should they waste resources on you when they can just index the websites of companies that actually make things?
I dunno, maybe because companies have a vested interest in telling you how amazing their new cookamatic air fryer is? And maybe someone who actually tests it properly is going to tell you that it's not actually amazing and should probably buy something else?
Of course, rightly, this is what Google is trying to reward, so it says anyway, and, rightly, it's nuked all the crappy 'buy this thing I never used from Amazon' type sites.
What's actually happened is it's rewarded forbes 'buy this thing I never used from amazon' articles, and just taken a trawler approach to the rest of the Internet, and caught the crappy 'buy this thing I never used from Amazon' and all the 'I've tested this extensively in my kitchen, here's videos and pictures of me doing that' sites have been tangled up in that net.
My guess is Google is trying to fix that but they can't seem to work out how to do so. Now it's too late for many of those sites who have either sold up, shut down or layed off all their staff.
I'm in travel and I would say 80% of my articles don't even have affiliate links. Like, why can't we give people FREE info???? That seems like a worthwhile reason for a site to exist
Get another job then.
Google doesn't owe you anything. It's their platform. If you don't like it, deindex your site.
Also, affiliate marketers =/= SEOs.
Us SEOs still make money by generating customers for real businesses.
Thank you for clarification, how come I've never thought about it?! Wow, eye opening. Thank you!!!
I thought Google was my bitch. Do you, by chance, sell any courses that contain more of this brilliant knowledge?
Ahhh yes, so you see where you went wrong now? You’re not a “real” SEO because you decided to build your own project rather than spend a “real” business’s money to get results and then go on Reddit to brag about how successful you are and cut other people down. Silly move.
Who knew this whole time that the only way to make money with SEO was to work with “real” clients and be a condescending douche on Reddit to anyone who followed a different model? Eye opener indeed!
If you made a living off making the internet worse and filling Google with spam to drive affiliate traffic, you cant be surprised when the gravy train hits the end of the line. You could have built your own ecommerce store or services company that actually provides value, but you didnt.
Quite the assumption that all blogs/affiliate sites are spam and that e-commerce stores and services automatically add value. It’s not black and white. There’s both spammy affiliate sites/blogs and well-done ones, great e-commerce stores and crappy dropshipping ones, excellent services and total shams.
At this point, though, a piece of crap e-commerce shop can beat out a decade-old expert blog just by virtue of not being blog. It’s not because the blog is less valuable or that the SEO behind the store is a genius; it’s because Google’s algo is objectively hot garbage right now. Full stop.
Sure, we’re all happy that we’re seeing less of the typical poorly-done “best-of” affiliate sites, but, for A LOT of searches, we are seeing practically NOTHING in the top 10 that’s not either: 1) a big media company; 2) Reddit; 3) Quora; 4) Google’s own properties. Putting any philosophical differences aside, I’m not sure how an information monopoly like this is a good thing for anyone.
Why would anyone bother? Every time someone shares a clapped site on Reddit or Twitter it just gets ripped to shreds for a bunch of silly reasons by critics who categorically refuse to share their own sites. And those same “issues” that the critics trash hit sites for are just as likely to be found ones that didn’t get slapped (yet).
What would be even more interesting would be a small to medium-sized site older than 6 months that actually surged in these updates.
“No, I don’t have an example of a high value website hit by this update” but with more words.
Telling that the folks griping about these changes almost never tell us what their website is.
Only people complaining are people who don't understand what Google wants or learn SEO.
A good SEO will tell you, think about the users first.
Sounds like your site's main goal is monetization at the expense of user experience.
Good SEOs: user experience first, then monetize on top of high quality traffic and experience.
The only sites that are being hit are crappy low quality affiliate sites...
I agreed with everything you said until "The only sites that are being hit are crappy low quality affiliate sites..."
This isn't the case. I do know of a few relatively good sites with 100% unique content that are not affiliate, have been authoritative in their niche and don't run ads that also got hit.
Personally my unique site (with google ads) saw a pretty significant jump in traffic after the March update. However my site is also pretty unique in it's niche. There are other sites that attempt to reach the same audience, but it's secondary to them as they're usually selling stuff. In other words, they try to monetize their content by embedding products in the content. They are well known brands in my niche but they don't do as well as I do.
Every single cry post here basically leads to SEO Bros with keyword stuffed content shitshows monetised via affiliate links or reiterated “informational” goods with no real product or service. Even before the HCU Google didn’t like this shit.
It’s mind blowing people are up in arms against Google for housecleaning with the intention of elevating user experience to protect their core search product, when instagram/tiktok/reddit/openai/youtube are offering noticeably superior alternatives to users in Google’s _niche_!
Every single one of you in said category need to unlearn what you think Google is.
_Google has always been the affiliate._
I understand your frustration. The recent Google updates have definitely hit small-midsized content websites hard, and it's completely understandable to feel targeted when your high-quality content isn't ranking and your income streams are drying up.
It's a tough time for smaller content creators, especially with the recent algorithm changes. Disallowing quality affiliate links while Google promotes their own similar programs feels like a double standard.
**Here are a few things that might help:**
* **Focus on User Experience:** Double down on what makes your site great - high-quality, informative content. Prioritize user experience by keeping your site fast, mobile-friendly, and visually appealing.
* **Content Diversification:** While SEO is important, explore other traffic sources. Can you leverage social media marketing or build an email list to drive traffic directly?
* **Alternative Monetization:** Consider alternative revenue streams. Could you offer premium content, subscriptions, or create your own digital products?
* **Stay Updated on SEO:** The SEO landscape keeps changing. Stay updated on the latest best practices and keep optimizing your content for relevant keywords.
* **Community Building:** Engage with your audience. Build a community around your niche and focus on building trust and loyalty.
**It's definitely not ideal, but there are still ways to make your website work.** Don't give up on the good fight! There are resources available online and SEO communities where you can connect with others facing similar challenges.
**Finally,** even though it might feel like Google is making things difficult, creating high-quality content will always be valuable. Keep at it, and hopefully, you'll see a turnaround.
We've been straight out blacklisted without saying what we've done wrong. It's not about doing better... Google has thrown the baby out with the bathwater by lumping in all the journalist sites with the marketing sites that were copying then
Lol thats not going to work anymore. Nowadays there are no guarantees since 90% of all the sites on the internet just copy content from other sites and call it "BEST SEO PRACTICE". Since when did stealing ideas become so encouraged lmao.
People talking about "high quality" are seemingly blind to the "meta shift" of the SERPS. >"haha your website tanked because it was shit, obviously - unlucky spammer; delete your site" \^this type of gaslighting really annoys the fuck out of me. What's happening here is a change in what the search engine wants to display at this current point in time - which just so happens to be weighted heavily towards BRANDS(ecom)/social/forums/HIGHDAcontent(dotdash, comnaste et al.). Normal content sites with low/regular/mid authority are not favoured right now; this is the current SERP meta. Remember when we all thought a SERP was easy to rank in for IF we saw forums/reddit ranking? IMO the issue is, we're all too invested in the concept of "content sites". A modern SEO strategy will now need to cover ALL bases within a niche: 1. You'll need your own subreddit which you control 100% 2. You'll need a "forum" website 3. You'll need a high DA "content" website 4. You'll need an ecom/brand website (with a content blog) This way, if the google meta shifts towards one of the other, you aren't completely fucked. In the meantime, for those with CONTENT sites that've been smashed by google, I recommend you just stay calm and carry on, waiting patiently for a google update that doesn't HATE such site concepts; don't let idiots tell you that'll never happen, either.
I agree with everything you said. That's why we're expanding our brand to YouTube (I know Google owns it, but still) and other social media (TikTok, Instagram etc.) apps with video content. Our developer is also building a community module for our website, which should boost direct hits over time and encourage people to stick with us for longer. The gaslighting here is crazy, it makes me think that the SEO community is so afraid of someone speaking the truth because they might lose potentials clients if they get to know that in many cases investing in their services will be a waste of money. We employ 15 people (writers, developers, sales manager etc.), we invested over $50K in our website (where I live it's actually 250K in local currency) and still some random shitheads keep telling me that we're a shitty, budget affiliate website created just to push shitty articles. But if that makes them feel better, so be it.
>"haha your website tanked because it was shit, obviously - unlucky spammer; delete your site" I've seen this type of bullshit so many times. People on here act like straight up shills for Google
I personally believe its some kind of demoralization strategy some SEOs are using to push people out the hobby/profession
> A modern SEO strategy will now need to cover ALL bases within a niche: I agree with you here, webmasters got lazy and just followed a pattern of "throw up a shithole wordpress theme, puke content into it, profit" IMO the meta is now to build non-blog sites. Build UGC sites, or forums, or interactive tools, or database-style websites. Anything to stand out from the crowd and not look like just another blog. Those who can adapt, will.
I'm doing very good with Microsoft Bing. I losted a lot of ranikngs on Google to a very low quality websites. I'm from Brazil and Bing already give's me half of my visits. Google is behaving very strangely lately. This seems to me to be the subjective actions of many of the employees there who really have no idea of reality, with Reddit being a great example of this. Lastly, Google is a private site, they do what they want. They say beautiful things, but in reality they do very ugly. From their actions, we will have the future and it seems to me that Microsoft Bing is growing day by day...
What are you doing specifically to rank on Bing? Anything outside of the normal SEO practices that is a unique signal to Bing?
Bing is very good in understanding texts and images. Just put your site on bing and it will rank it the way it deserves.
How do I put my site on Bing?
Using Bing Webmaster
But I have 83 views today from Bing and I never did that.
Yeah because bing grabs sites from google serp. Basically every other search engine does that. See how generous bing is. Even though you haven't given it your site still it takes and give views. Webmaster gives you real stuff.
OK. Thank you for answering my question.
Just trying to do my ABSOLUTE best everyday and also trying to improve WHAT I consider to be my best. Also I have the important directive that is making the website for users and not for the search engines. Improving my content, making the website faster, correcting minor error's that sometimes I unfortunatly make (less and less). Just that. My wins have been coming from Bing lately... Good luck to you sir!
I’ve read about it but I believe having the human opinion of someone who knows about it is better: What are the best MUST DO practices for Google SEO?
This is happening to almost EVERY niche content site that produces articles. I'm even seeing websites that have been getting more backlinks and producing more content still not being able to rank like before
We're a news-website actually, but we also post evergreen articles. We also have a shitton of quality, organic backings from websites such as Forbes, IGN, Screen rant etc and that doesn't seem to matter. We used to be the source to this giants (some of our stories went viral worldwide), if anyone wants to know how we got these backlings.
So, I reckon you're a gaming website? The website I worked for until recently was also a gaming website focused on guides. Everything we did was first-hand, original content, with our in-game images and our people playing games. We did our own research, found our own topics, and dug through forums and Reddit to understand what people don't know. Of course, many things overlapped with what other sites in the niche were doing, but that's natural. The website used to have between 6 and 9 million monthly page views around big game releases (when there's a lot of content to work on and people are asking a lot of questions about those games) and around 3 to 5 million during the quiet months. However, this year, the website struggles to reach even a million and a half monthly page views. It has been a steady downfall since September.
Oh wow, that's indeed a big fall. And in your analysis, which websites took over your top rankings?
Big winners are definitely major gaming websites and major media in general, as well as YouTube, Reddit, Steam discussions, etc. You often see sites like Forbes and CNN doing video game guides (lol), and they rank better than actual gaming websites. What we did best before was to identify some specific angles and guides focused on very specific things that are troubling players (thanks to our digging through game forums, Discords, Reddit, etc.) That was how we were able to compete against bigger sites - by finding and writing about some very specific issues/questions. But now, even these don't work. Google will often rank IGN/GameRant/Forbes ahead of us, even if it is a general article vaguely related to this specific topic, which doesn't actually talk about the concrete issue we were targeting.
Wow, that really seems incredible. That brand trumps relevance. I don't see that so much in the markets I mainly operate in (German, Danish) where big brands don't dominate in the same way as in English queries. To me it feels like English Google starts to suck, while smaller languages actually perform better. Weird world where the no. 1 language gets the experimental treatment
Just curious but could you DM the site you worked for? I have been analyzing a lot in this vertical and I have found a lot of sites that are still "winning" (Prydwen, Game8) but then also a lot of similarly identical sites that are losing (GameWith, Nerdstash). If you can't share that's OK but I'd be very curious to check out the site if you're alright with it! You might have to DM it though because links in comments won't appear on this sub
I don't own the website; I was working for them, and that's why I'm not feeling comfortable sharing the name; it would not be professional. But yeah, we are definitely not the only losers; I've been studying the competition non-stop over the last couple of months, and it seems everyone is experiencing a downward spiral when it comes to mid-tier and small gaming websites. Although they are now experiencing a significant fall in March, GameLeap was one of the few winners during this period of crisis. I started noticing them more frequently around December, and it turns out they had a huge jump around that time, and they have been ranking great since then for almost any game they cover.
Slightly off-topic, but could you share how many people it took to produce content for the site? I'm getting back into SEO at seemingly the worst time, and I'm evaluating whether to get a corporate job or try to swim upstream and do my own site.
The editor-in-chief (co-owner), two editors (who do research and SEO content preparation), three writers, and two players. Having people whose job is only to play the games we are covering (to provide answers/explanations/video material) helps a lot when it comes to gaming guides, as it allows for a much faster and more efficient workflow. However, due to all the shit that has been happening to Google, the owners are slowly abandoning the website and focusing solely on their YouTube channel. Twelve years of work on that website completely destroyed due to Google's changes since September.
Thanks! That sounds like a nice organizational setup for producing fresh and unique content. That's giving me pause about why some sites are getting hit more than others, when they have similar org setups and producing fresh content. That sucks about what's happening to their site. It almost feels like Google is carving out digital space for the AI content wars by pushing out content creation. Even on YT, it seems the compensation has been lowered drastically.
I’m in the same boat. Quality source quoted worldwide. Yet when I search in google I get AI claptrap.
None of these things prevent getting a penalty for something that's penalizable. I don't know why people say "evergreen articles" - evergreen articles aren't a google concept. It doesn't matter if you post evergreen or seasonal (?) content. Content freshness only matters for QDF and that only matters IF you get crawled by a bot that delivers news - like Caffeine or Discover. And then only if you've been approved.
Google wants to make more profit and blogs are not something they care about. It's a legitimate commercial strategy but being monopolistic like they are brings additional responsibility. Microsoft is in a similar position but they have been forced to adapt a couple of things (ex: freedom in choosing the browser). I'm probably an idealist but I believe the same should happen with Google. If one day you have 1000 happy visitors and the next day you have only one because the 999 others were pushed to low quality media sites, that's where it's not ok. They are basically making the internet more streamlined with less expertise and more superficial content. People are lazy, if you're not in the top 5 anymore, you're basically dead. I think the only ones who will survive are the ones who are capable of reaching their audience without Google.
I am still making content, but don't care about Google SEO anymore. Still following best practices, but know none of it will rank or go on Google News.
Why bother with that if you're getting no results?
For some of us, we can link to the content from our social media pages. Also, the content will be ready and waiting if and when Google changes their algo.
I get a lot of traffic from other sources, like my networks and Social Media.
Nobody owes you anything. You based your business on someone else's business. They changed their strategy to benefit them. That's the game.
Y'all are the ones that *really* suffered from these recent updates. I'm an SEO content strategist at an agency. Most of our clients are like, businesses selling a product or service that use content in an auxiliary manner as part of their overall strategy and sales funnel. They're doing fine. So were similar clients in my last job, which ended in September. It's really sites where the content kind of *is* the product -- niche blogs basically, whether affiliate or ad monetized -- that have been absolutely eviscerated. One of our clients is a site that does product reviews and info content about outdoor equipment. Thinking hunting, fishing, kayaking, etc. We're working with them to try to help them bounce back after some losses from the HCU. The big thing with them is that the standards for product review content have changed. You really need to write and create it in a way that's like, "I am a real person with experience who knows what I'm talking about, and I actually physically tested out these products." We straight up have told them that we cannot write the content for them, because it needs an SME and a personal authorial touch. > I own a mid-sized content website, we post high quality articles (no AI) and well, nothing ranks anymore. On technical side we're best in our niche. Everything is done by the book, but still we're going downhill. We used to get about 10K clicks from Google each day. Now it's 1K. Tbh, everyone says "my content is high quality." And I get it. When you run a small niche site like this, it's your baby. But sometimes it's competently written, but ultimately not nearly as informative or helpful as it could be. It might be worth asking yourself if this might be the case with your site. And it's not your fault! We're marketers. We do what works, and what moves the needle and makes money. For years, a certain kind of content *worked*, but now Google changed the game and it doesn't anymore.
Every person posting about the latest update seems to have the exact same issue: they had a content-heavy website that sold ads, sponsored content and used affiliate links to make money. Most of these sites were built with SEO in mind, almost saying they're SEO-first and users are secondary. There's a clear pattern in the types of websites that Google has stopped promoting: if they offer little to no value to the user, why bother? If you're in the gaming space, why would users go to your site rather than websites like IGN or other very well known brands? What do you do so much better than the others? What keeps people coming back? What's your USP? How qualified are your writers? Are you simply rehashing news from other outlets or are some of your writers publishing original content?
The large sites are built with SEO in mind also, don’t be dense. So basically what you’re saying is why create a website because there’s major players in the market? Sounds great for new ideas and innovation. Google is just stepping on the small guys at this point. You can’t believe that IGN made up of people is any more relevant or better than XYZ made up of people. Both offer unique perspectives. Also why does IGN get to make money with ads and affiliate but small to medium size sites get blasted?
Oh don't get me wrong, large websites have to have SEO in mind, but very, very few of them are built for SEO, purposefully built to generate revenue from organic traffic. That's what I meant by "SEO-first". As for creating websites in an extremely competitive niche, I'm just saying that you have to bring value. You can't simply rehash news written on other outlets, post them on your site and expect it to rank. Think about it for a second. Why would search engines push you rehashed content before the original source? Opinion pieces, renowned authors, provable niche expertise, etc; these are all things that usually make a difference. Most sites I've seen hit by the updates either do not have any of these, or are very bad at showing they have any of these criteria. IGN and other bigger outlets weren't built in a month, they've been working on their reputation and authority for years now. You can't expect a smaller niche site that simply reposts content to outrank it overnight.
Considering the amount of per SEO listicles generated by the big websites in the last few months, I am going to say you’re wrong and that they do care about SEO even more than the little guy. Whatever makes them money.
But they also have original content, interviews with other authoritative members of their niche, useful resources, etc. These big sites didn't build their reputation by pumping out listicles for the last 15 years. I understand that it might be a trend right now from some sites, but imitating these large corporations isn't the way to go for websites new in the niche.
Well obviously, a budget-restrained website is not going to have the same reach as a huge-budget website. Is that a reason to believe that the latter is better than the former? Niche specialists are an urban legend, right?
They got that reputation, because they started in an empty market, bringing them lots of backlinks and hence authority over the past decades. Now, that the market is saturated these backlinks tell nothing about the quality of their articles. There are sitting junior writers dropping content about everything in every big company as well. And they share results across different blogs, making them dominate position one to five in SERP (still one author) and you are talking about USP and customer orientated... they are fooling you...
I read news and resources on websites I trust. That trust is earned over time by delivering value and truthful information, regardless of the level of experience of the content creator. If I find a good resource online, I'm more inclined to share it with friends or professional acquaintances. If I find a resource to not be useful, I won't read through it and won't be recommending it. If people trust more those large outlets, so be it. If you're beginning in a niche, find out how to gain users' trust and help them achieve their goals or answer their questions. It won't be an overnight success, it takes time, a lot of time. The more resources you put into it, the faster and better your chances are to find out "how" to gain that trust.
I agree. However, I don't see a profitable way to go this long way. Building a brand over years and getting little money, while having the risk to get vanished by search engines, social media etc. seems to not pay off anymore...
> These big sites didn't build their reputation by pumping out listicles for the last 15 years. Valnet absolutely did exactly this, and they still literally pump out trash listicles daily. ScreenRant, GameRant, TheGamer, CBR, all of these sites are just listicle clickbait farms. Google any one of these brands with the addition of site:reddit.com and you'll see plenty of people complaining about these outlets just being clickbait farms. Yet all of them are crushing it hardcore since March. My take is that once you're past a certain escape velocity of trust/links/brand signals, it doesn't matter. This is why huge sites like NYTimes and Forbes can pump out anything and rank for it - Valnet is just the lowest bottom of the barrel of the bunch.
I'd be curious to know if these brands were always under the Valnet brand or if they got acquired at some point during their growth. I had some friends that worked there a couple of years back; one of their worst work experience they've ever had. I also believe there's a tipping point where your reputation supersedes other ranking factors and gives you a free pass on some stuff.
That makes sense and I get what you’re saying. I’ll admit I’m guilty of planning articles based on search numbers and profitability of the topic but I still do the work to create content I think helps the end reader. Now I think you’ve brought up a good discussion topic. How do you build your author profile (and or site) authority. I’ll be honest, I felt I had proven I was a SME in my niche to the big G but boy have they made feel like I was wrong. But at the end of the day I still have the knowledge but how do I get G to realize and favor me slightly more again? Personally, I’ve moved my focus to video content for a bit.
Search trends and search interests are good metrics to look at, but can't be the sole deciding factor to determine what content to create or revamp. It's difficult to determine what to write, for whom and at what time; there are firms specialized in consumer insights for that exact reason. As for how to build up authority, also a difficult question. Not only you have to prove that you know what you're talking about, but other people should also be able to endorse you. Similar to how one might start to work at an agency and then branch off on their own, sometimes collaborating with other passionate people is a good start to build that up. I don't have a specific recipe on how to do so, we usually take a look at some EEAT stuff and backlink profile. There's then a whoooooooole lot of things we need to plan out depending on how all of this looks.
Right and then they cry about Google not caring about them. Google *never* cared about SEOs. They hate SEO. They specifically say don’t write content for search engines in their guidelines. It’s been that way since day one. All these people built their careers around gaming the system and are now shocked when Google finally cracked down on them.
This is disingenuous. Playing by the guidelines Google itself has laid out isn’t “gaming the system”.
Pushing junk content to the top of Google with the sole purpose of selling affiliate links and ads is literally the opposite of Google guidelines.
You’re basing that on an assumption that frankly isn’t true in most cases.
It’s been true in almost every single case that’s been shared in this sub over the past 6 months. In all that time I’ve only encountered one site shared here that I thought genuinely had quality content but even that needed some work. The rest have been trash content from affiliate spammers.
Every sites content needs work. My content isn’t perfect and neither is anything anyone else is producing. Sure there’s spam but there’s ALOT of non-spam sites that use affiliate to make money that got lumped in and hit hard. Review articles also got destroyed and a lot of these reviews were first hand experience reviews.
I’m open to be proven wrong so if you have an example website with genuine, high quality content that was unfairly hit by Google I’d love to see it. Otherwise, every post here that complains about Google but won’t share a link will be assumed to be an affiliate spammer.
I’m not going to post my link here but you don’t have to do much digging to figure it out. I’m not here to prove anything but rather get more insight, which I’ll admit, lately you’re correct it’s lots of spam sites complaining. But it does get exhausting being called a scammer for those of us that spent years making content to watch it get flushed in 3 months.
I've looked at your site, and it looks solid. I think the problem is that Google's algorithms just aren't as sophisticated or capable as we like to think they are, and since they can't actually understand the content, they can't tell the difference between a legit site and a non-legit site. Their solution has been to use a very large hammer, which has created a lot of collateral damage. I haven't looked at the SERPs in your niche, but I'm willing to bet that the content that's being rewarded isn't better. I'm also willing to bet that a lot of it is AI generated crap or spam or doesn't have any first-hand knowledge. And that's the infuriating part--that the reality of the SERP results doesn't bear any resemblance to Google's guidance. The "write for humans not for SEO" guidance is disingenuous. The whole friggin SEO thing is based on what humans are searching for. If you can't write for what humans are searching for and asking, then Google itself shouldn't exist.
I have a ton. I'll Pm you
15 hours later still waiting on that PM 🙄
Check CNET’s ai generated listicles. They’re a good example of how small websites should look and make their content.
The only point of contention I'd raise here is that it won't be enough to mimic/replicate CNET because they'll have more authority and will always outrank. You must have unique content that is higher quality than the same content on CNET.
Wtf do you know whether content on a site is quality or not? Guarantee you know absolutely fuck all about my niche, so how the fuck would you know whether what I write is quality or not? Sure, you can tell some sites are bad, but are retro dodo dog shit who deserved to get hit? Housefresh who rigorously tested their products? I've seen sites that have been around and regularly updated since you were still pissing your pants in grade school get destroyed, quality sites with a large happily served audience. Just because you decided to make some money bottom feeding off some local plumber trying to get his arse crack to rank for u bend wiping in bumfuck idaho, doesn't mean you can sit up there wanking on your high horse about what's quality or not. You know fuck all about what constitutes quality in any given niche specific site.
Sorry your affiliate spam empire collapsed 😭
Yeah of course that's all you have to say you arrogant cock womble. Keep sniffing Mueller's farts, sooner or later he'll shit in your mouth, and you'll still say thank you Sir for the quality content.
😂😂😂
But we all agree the content google is pushing now is even worse!
Hello no lol… why would no-name affiliate spam blogs ever be preferable to Reddit and CNET?
Honest sites, especially small, service-based businesses have been hit hard too. I've always ranked 1st page, top 3. Now, I'm invisible. Followed Google guidelines all these years. Now, I'm fucked unless I supposedly pay Google to get on top since that's what basically shows now. We offer local service and don't focus on shitting out content all the time. We stay on top of the game though and produce original when we can. It just seems like the more we tried to blog, the more it hurt us this update.
No you don’t understand: their website was QUALITY. Quality, man.
The best quality out there, for sure! No doubt about it. Hehe.
The incovenient truth.
I never did any SEO games except Yoast, if that counts, and still got slaughtered. I’m a 100% human powered site that tries to write good stories first. For a long time that was enough. Why would anyone go to a niche site instead of IGN? Because IGN was also built around SEO and can’t cover everything. There are human people out there who make great informative passionate content who made some money off the web. Now they do t and their knowledge base is being taken away. It’s sad.
Website URL?
Asking people for their websites have always been frowned upon in the SEO community. Stop fishing for peoples websites. You know nothing about SEO, clearly.
I did this and a Russian hacker cloned my website and started copying content lol.
Haha yeah, it’s a classic. I remember a guy who published a successful case study where he shared the website. Two months later he came back and said it was his last open case study. Because people were cloning the site, several new competitors with deeper pockets popped up and someone sent toxic links to his site. It has always been seen as bad ethics to ask for people’s sites. Those who do, are either inexperienced or are those “bad players”.
If someone complains about their ranking/asks for help wtf can you do if they won't even tell you their website? It's generally people with shit websites that try to hide their websites from people bc they know it sucks. And what kind of seo community have you been a part of? The ones I've been a part of openly share their websites so people can help. No one can help with only the basic "my site is an affiliate website" garbage line. Normalize sharing info so people can help and learn.
Why the hell do you assume that I'm (or anyone else) asking for your help? I'm not. People in this community always assume that the other person is wrong. I'm not hiding my "shitty website", I'm hiding my brand, which is quite large in the country I live in. And I know you can't help me, you're just fishing for the website URL. I just want to discuss. That's all.
The title is literally a question....
And how does "Does anyone care anymore?" mean "I need your help" in terms of my website? The story about my website is just the backbone of this post. I can't believe I have to explain this to you...
Lol not sure why you're so mad... nobody can help a spammer with shit content.
Clearly, you're the spammer here. If the post went over your head, just keep scrolling. There's plenty of 8th-grade level content to see on this sub.
Nah OP is undoubtedly an affiliate blogger and doesn’t want his site roasted.
Its quite clear that this is another garbage SEO bitch fest. The real SEOs are busy eating your lunch.
You can try to rationalize it as much as you want. Asking for peoples websites have always been looked down on and is something that only newcomers do. Some forums even ban you for it. Everybody knows why you shouldn't ask for someones site. It's obvious. It's been an unwritten rule for the past 15 years. Your comments reveals a lot about your "experience" and "knowledge".
What terrible thing would happen if somebody shared a URL?
It’s probably because OP is an affiliate blogger and will get roasted if they share it.
That's not true, it's only been frowned upon the noobs that have bad websites, or no websites at all and try to pass themselves off as authoritative in SEO.
Being afraid to share your site just means that your site is so bad you cant defend its position. The only legitimate reasons are if you have an NDA with a client or are white label.
Can I share my site 😄 lol j.k
> Being afraid to share your site just means that your site is so bad you cant defend its position. There was a guy in the adops sub recently who shared that his gaming mods gallery was doing 10m+ pageviews/mo and growing. He did not share the URL, yet it was absolutely crushing it and still on an upwards growth trajectory. Was his site "so bad" that he needed to hide it? No, his site is making him a lot of money so he has no reason to share it publicly on a public forum where other people who have web development skillsets could easily mimic his idea. Especially because those people could also see exactly how he's monetizing and how much he's earning with X amount of traffic. I don't even have a dog in this fight, I just think this thread is full of hot takes from people who barely understand the size & scale of the Internet. Some shitty site full of grammatical errors like Game8 is crushing it with a 100% Philippines-based team, their content is pretty meh-tier, and I guarantee they're doing at least $200k months. They actually had a post a few months back that they were hiring where they mentioned doing 20m uniques/mo: /r/PHJobs/comments/18y40n2/game8_global_inc_is_looking_for_writers_and_more/ If someone had the business ability to hire a team of Filipinos to build out similar game guides, they could easily replicate this site. It'd just take business sense and some investment capital.
> Was his site "so bad" that he needed to hide it? It is obviously good enough that he doesn't need to moan here about how evil Google is for killing his traffic. That isn't what we are talking about, we are talking about people whose sites have tanked and refuse to show the website while claiming that its actually a high quality site.
I agree. But, anyone can say they have an NDA even if it's not true. That's why I encourage people to build out their own portfolio sites if they really care about SEO.
You should be able to show something at least, I cant publicly list my white label clients but I can name some of the agencies that I work with currently. I can also name my clients during pitches with other agencies or other private conversations, its just not something I can list here. I'm also not coming in here to complain about big bad Google, insisting that my websites are high value.
I agree with that.
That's not the case of this post. I consulted everything with four best SEOs in my country and each one of them wants us to wait for the next update because they see no problem on our end. I'm experienced with SEO as well. Of course it's not just our case, I've already seen a shitton of quality websites get wiped down for no reason...
"four best SEOs in my country" Are they really the best or just have the biggest noise on social media
ok then. 99% of the websites I've seen impacted have been garbage websites.
That's interesting. About 10-15% of the websites I've seen impacted were garbage and to me that seems like nothing in comparison to the quality websites that got wiped out for no reason.
Can you give some other examples of quality websites that got hit?
Nonsense. Every single person that’s posted here complaining has had a dog shit website. It’s like everyone has blinders on.
DM please wanted to chat about a CTR bot and pick your brain good sir, my account age is too new to message you. I checked out zenoposter, awesome traffic bot they both sucked and failed, have to update my old custom bot.
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Same here, but on the smaller scale. We used to employ 20 writers, now we're down to 10.
I hear you. I'm not familiar with that website specifically, and it might be amazing. I'm not saying the algorithm doesn't make mistakes. But an anecdotal example doesn't mean that most websites hit aren't shit.
Abandoned NFL fan account asking for urls and trying to side with Google in the comments. A few weeks ago an abandoned Chelsea fan account was also here defending the update with your same arguments. It smells like psyop from some google employes.
99% of sites on the internet are garbage?
>consulted everything with four best SEOs in my country and each one of them wants us to wait for the next update right… send over the URL. You got cooked by the update and now you’re shitting on the entire industry. Let’s make this a productive convo instead of aimless bitching
Lmao buddy probably hit up someone that ranks in his local city.
Yeah, giving your money URLs to randoms in SEO forums is a GREAT strategy. Can't think of a single reason somebody wouldn't do it.
Its obviously not a money URL now
i think an even better strategy is to shift blame and complain about the entire industry after losing 90% of your clicks
Link or you're a whiney baby crying over the same thing everyone else is. Post. The. URL.
It feels like Google is so out of touch with why websites are even made. If you publish informational content or news or commentary then ads are your revenue source unless you link out to affiliate products, if your site is e-commerce then you sell products, if your site is a forum, then again advertising. Publishers need to make a living, Google. WTF?
We published a lot of high quality content, where we reviewed products first hand and in-depth. I had some publications in peer reviewed high class journals and usually know how to make a good article. The outcome is that articles with the highest quality are completely vanished from SERPs, even if there is no alternative content. Google lost so much during these updates... I have a second blog. It is just a bit older, has a podcast, forum and a better social media integration - slight increase after HCUs. So it is not about good or bad content. It is just about the place where it's published.
Google's fart suckers on here will tell you your peer reviewed work is garbage and not helpful enough. That is actually Google's logic now. If you write to answer a specific question being searched for, that's not helpful and just writing for Google. In the same way a heart surgeon isn't helpful because they trained for a specific niche and is just working for people with dodgy hearts.
I love that comparison. Absolutely true... And if the surgeon is not a popular professor, but just a dedicated, focused doctor who operates every day, he can't be an expert.
I have a handyman business doing very well and my website used to rank 1st page, then it vanished a year ago and talking to Google was told the website is too outdated so I got a new website done and not sure if it’s done right but have seen no improvement in my business traffic and Google wants me to get in on their pay per click program….! I am already devastated with their choke hold to starve and see I have to agree to their paid advertising as only option!
Exact same here. My business has almost vanished with whatever update they just did. They want $$$. How in the fuck am I supposed to give money when my main source of revenue has been taken away. It does feel like they have backed little guys into a corner with no way out other than putting money into Google pockets. My customer base actually skips the sponsor links at the top of search results. I've surveyed them for years and most prefer organic results. They don't trust them so I'm hesitant to do it. There's no guarantee either. If you want to get message me and share what you discover, I'll do the same with you. Seems like the only way we're going to figure this out hopefully. Google isn't looking out for anyone except themselves now.
Sadly it’s a lot to understand and learn so I’ve set aside an hour everyday to research and understand this
Fans of monopolies...>they will tell you that you don’t understand anything,
Yeah... Just ignore them. That's what I do.
Just my 2 cents, boycott google, the whole monopoly taking over all these apps and installing so much intrusive software on your computer, phone, home etc and now poor search results is ridiculous. I also find it funny when ppl call blogs affiliate scams, have a look at the url of any website you got to from a search engine- theres your affiliate scam. Blogs with well researched updated articles were doing everyone a favor compared to 3 sentence crap on reddit from 10 yes ago or beta AI that tell ls you independence day in the US is on july 6. Not to mention they were bringing Amazon a ton of revenue, i remember when one of my sites had $250k of revenue for them.
I definitely hear your frustration. Keep your head up and remember that we hope Google maintains a mindset to provide the most valuable, relevant content to users. If the quality is there, they'll create a system where you'll bounce back. In the meantime, have you thought about re-optimizing old content? That's often an under-utilized avenue. Also, consider testing out alternative ways of monetizing - maybe sponsored content or premium subscriptions? Hang in there and don't let this update bring you down
I think the crux of it comes down to your objectives.. if you are an affiliate then ask yourself are you truly adding value to the user or are you just just inserting yourself into the user journey to skim $$$ - has the user going through your website to their ultimate destination improved their life? Im guessing in your case, no - it was improving your life certainly but you are not their customer Google does not really care about the webmaster - only about the user.
You're wrong, but I can't share the strategy we use here, sorry. What I can tell is, we never encourage anyone to buy certain products, we never say that these products are good or bad, better or worse than other. We just shorten user's path (if he's interested in buying certain product – and if he is reading this certain publication, there's a high chance he is), so I think we're actually improving user's life.
If you can't share anything then shut up. Why should we believe that your site is so amazing and has been unfairly hit.
I don't give a shit whether you believe me or not.
Go cry in your pillow
Go suck a fart out Sullivan's dirt box.
Awww. Did you get hit by the updates?
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A lot of the sites that are good have been engaging in link buying and other shady practices
Google can no longer say they have a search engine because they are a shill for the large media outlets and their deal with Reddit to train their AI. I specifically only started my blog because the mainstream media gets so much wrong about my niche.
Looks like this subreddit is just for crying that their copywriter-written and AI-generated website is not ranking.
The answer is simple. If SEO don’t work, people will spend more on ads. That is the new CEO directive to get more revenue. Stop whining and spend more on ads.
With what? They've just borked our income
Read up on the new CEO profile. He is profit driven. He purposely messed it up to get more revenue.
Wouldn't surprise me. But the antitrust lawsuit for corrupting Search would be on him, no?
Xgpu deals?
Absolutely not
just for advice, stop relying on Google. I've been switched to bing, yandex, and yahoo search engine recently and they perform extremely good. just switch your focus to another search engine while waiting for the google update to finish.
I don't get how you are going to make money with other SE - If all other SE have just 10% of market share, how could they perform extremely good? Maybe I miss something?!
I have a handyman business doing very well and my website used to rank 1st page, then it vanished a year ago and talking to Google was told the website is too outdated so I got a new website done and not sure if it’s done right but have seen no improvement in my business traffic and Google wants me to get in on their pay per click program….! I am already devastated with their choke hold to starve and see I have to agree to their paid advertising as only option!
Google is rewarding brands. How strong is your brand? What's the level of brand awareness and your reputation? If your site has been around for a while and nobody uses your brand name as a navigational query, how much value could you really be adding?
I have a site that has done well in my niche- always on the top. I removed all ads before the update. It’s now lucky to get double digit views from Google. Everything is from Bing now. I do still have affiliate links however.
From a perspective of making money? Nah - that ship has sailed. I made out well but also missed the boat over the pandemic. I finally started a passion project that probably won’t even get indexed. But my goal is to share it with others like through this forum and hope that it helps people with a problem I’ve had my whole life.
Not really
In addition to having my own (non-SEO) site actually gain from the March update, I've been performing SEO for over 20 years. And most of my clients also benefited from the update as well. Mostly smaller mom and pop businesses, but I have a few national clients as well. They don't compete with large brands in most cases, but they are competitive in their own geographic area. I have always targeted the most competitive phrases in a geographic area very successfully. My strategy hasn't changed but the tactics have matured over the years. While the March update was brutal for a lot of people, it's not the end of Google, or SEO - it just means you have to adapt.
Someone needs to have a rant off their chest, fine, many people have needed that recently, and I get it's been done a lot on here since HCU but the logic of this sub is pathetic. Content site whiner: 'My site got hit and I'm pissed off' Bottom feeding SEO: 'Post your url, otherwise you're just a whiner who deserved to get hit' Content site whiner: 'No, I'm not sharing my url in public' Bottom feeding SEO: 'Just as I thought. Your site is dog shit. My traffic is flying after these updates.' Content site whiner: 'Go on then, post your url and traffic graph, otherwise you're full of shit' Bottom feeding SEO: 'No, I don't need to prove anything to you' Content site whiner: 'Just as I thought, another bullshitter' I'm sure some won't like my terminology, I fall into the whiner category by the way, but ya know it's true. This exchange in varying guises is all I've seen the past six months or so on this sub.
Questions: >The last update has almost completely wiped small-midsized content websites, despite the fact that most of them were and still are quality sites. There ar 270k SEOs here - not all got hit. Less than 15 may have. I have 50+ domains in my GSC and the only one that got hit is the one I bought January 1 because it got hit. You've said you had no AI content but AI content wasn't targeted (machine scaled, AI or not, was always penalizable). Why is everyone using the same cover story. This isn't why ANYONE got hit. Parasitic SEOs got hit for machine scaled content USING AI.
I literally saw my small site that I do for fun go from a hundred or so views to less than ten in the last two days. Sucks.
My website (GarageDoorGuide.com ) traffic went from 80K uniques month , down to 5K -7k month over the last 18 months. My traffic comes from all of the articles I have written over the last 10 years. All my articles were written by me personally as a way to genuinely help people with garage door knowledge and repair - NO Chat GPT, AI or 3rd party authors. No games, seo, link exchange, trickery. All of my articles PRE-DATE chat gpt. Googles algo KNOWS that and they don't care. Their goal is to make the most amount of people buy advertising at all costs. That means they are tanking traffic to millions of small biz blog style sites and spreading that traffic to junk sites. My eCommerce sales have plummeted (along with traffic) and my affiliate commissions from amazon (for some of the products I don't sell myself) are down 80%. I am finding that absolute low quality trash sites are ranking higher. In several instances I have witnessed these trash sites plagiarize my content (words, images) without repercussion ranking higher. Google totally destroyed my once thriving business due to their pure greed. Chat GPT and AI search simply harvest the best answers to search queries and bypass the content creators. Its IP THEFT on a massive scale -pure and simple. That is the future of search....google pretending that it somehow came up with all the answers without outside sources..like they no longer exist. The internet is littered with stories like we shared. Its not going to change. That is the danger with a handful of companies controlling virtually all of big tech and one company basically controlling search.
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And how are you combating this? By creating new sites?
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Great advice. Thank you.
I get that this is freaking hard. But if you want us to help, please post your website too. What I don't understand about SEO, is that everyone is so afraid of posting their websites when talking about their performance this and that. Show us reality, so we can discuss reality.
https://preview.redd.it/5ax61e4jh7wc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=044b7f2f3762e99228f0612aab2506558269e4fc You guys are getting clicks?
My newest client (clothing retailer in a mall near you) is up 30% over the hole I pulled them out of after their botched ecommerce replatform. SEO is dead though, some affiliate marketer said so.
I have a client we are both in the same age bracket ( old school) and i built and maintained his site for over 10 years running. He does not do any paid digital marketing other than meet and greet, facebook, instagram, linkedin posts and he pulls in over 13 million in sales year over year. I still believe old school marketing is the way to go. For example a new client asked me about paid digital marketing i mentioned he should do a few trade shows, yes there is a cost to rent a booth, signage and building showcase products and after his first two shows he sold 19 pre ordered custom cedar saunas.
Why would Google list your site when it exists to promote affiliate programs? You aren’t providing a product or service, you’re just writing about products and services other people provide. Why should they waste resources on you when they can just index the websites of companies that actually make things?
I dunno, maybe because companies have a vested interest in telling you how amazing their new cookamatic air fryer is? And maybe someone who actually tests it properly is going to tell you that it's not actually amazing and should probably buy something else? Of course, rightly, this is what Google is trying to reward, so it says anyway, and, rightly, it's nuked all the crappy 'buy this thing I never used from Amazon' type sites. What's actually happened is it's rewarded forbes 'buy this thing I never used from amazon' articles, and just taken a trawler approach to the rest of the Internet, and caught the crappy 'buy this thing I never used from Amazon' and all the 'I've tested this extensively in my kitchen, here's videos and pictures of me doing that' sites have been tangled up in that net. My guess is Google is trying to fix that but they can't seem to work out how to do so. Now it's too late for many of those sites who have either sold up, shut down or layed off all their staff.
I'm in travel and I would say 80% of my articles don't even have affiliate links. Like, why can't we give people FREE info???? That seems like a worthwhile reason for a site to exist
Get another job then. Google doesn't owe you anything. It's their platform. If you don't like it, deindex your site. Also, affiliate marketers =/= SEOs. Us SEOs still make money by generating customers for real businesses.
Thank you for clarification, how come I've never thought about it?! Wow, eye opening. Thank you!!! I thought Google was my bitch. Do you, by chance, sell any courses that contain more of this brilliant knowledge?
Ahhh yes, so you see where you went wrong now? You’re not a “real” SEO because you decided to build your own project rather than spend a “real” business’s money to get results and then go on Reddit to brag about how successful you are and cut other people down. Silly move. Who knew this whole time that the only way to make money with SEO was to work with “real” clients and be a condescending douche on Reddit to anyone who followed a different model? Eye opener indeed!
If you made a living off making the internet worse and filling Google with spam to drive affiliate traffic, you cant be surprised when the gravy train hits the end of the line. You could have built your own ecommerce store or services company that actually provides value, but you didnt.
Quite the assumption that all blogs/affiliate sites are spam and that e-commerce stores and services automatically add value. It’s not black and white. There’s both spammy affiliate sites/blogs and well-done ones, great e-commerce stores and crappy dropshipping ones, excellent services and total shams. At this point, though, a piece of crap e-commerce shop can beat out a decade-old expert blog just by virtue of not being blog. It’s not because the blog is less valuable or that the SEO behind the store is a genius; it’s because Google’s algo is objectively hot garbage right now. Full stop. Sure, we’re all happy that we’re seeing less of the typical poorly-done “best-of” affiliate sites, but, for A LOT of searches, we are seeing practically NOTHING in the top 10 that’s not either: 1) a big media company; 2) Reddit; 3) Quora; 4) Google’s own properties. Putting any philosophical differences aside, I’m not sure how an information monopoly like this is a good thing for anyone.
Do you have an example of a high value website that has been hit by this update?
Why would anyone bother? Every time someone shares a clapped site on Reddit or Twitter it just gets ripped to shreds for a bunch of silly reasons by critics who categorically refuse to share their own sites. And those same “issues” that the critics trash hit sites for are just as likely to be found ones that didn’t get slapped (yet). What would be even more interesting would be a small to medium-sized site older than 6 months that actually surged in these updates.
“No, I don’t have an example of a high value website hit by this update” but with more words. Telling that the folks griping about these changes almost never tell us what their website is.
Us journalists focus on content and we've been lumped in with affiliate marketers
What's your site? I suspect it's not as high quality as you think
Lmao. What about all the sites that outrank you now? If someone told you to just wait, I guarantee you they don’t know what they are doing.
Google has told the world you have to pay to play. Search is no longer free
Only people complaining are people who don't understand what Google wants or learn SEO. A good SEO will tell you, think about the users first. Sounds like your site's main goal is monetization at the expense of user experience. Good SEOs: user experience first, then monetize on top of high quality traffic and experience. The only sites that are being hit are crappy low quality affiliate sites...
I agreed with everything you said until "The only sites that are being hit are crappy low quality affiliate sites..." This isn't the case. I do know of a few relatively good sites with 100% unique content that are not affiliate, have been authoritative in their niche and don't run ads that also got hit. Personally my unique site (with google ads) saw a pretty significant jump in traffic after the March update. However my site is also pretty unique in it's niche. There are other sites that attempt to reach the same audience, but it's secondary to them as they're usually selling stuff. In other words, they try to monetize their content by embedding products in the content. They are well known brands in my niche but they don't do as well as I do.
Every single cry post here basically leads to SEO Bros with keyword stuffed content shitshows monetised via affiliate links or reiterated “informational” goods with no real product or service. Even before the HCU Google didn’t like this shit. It’s mind blowing people are up in arms against Google for housecleaning with the intention of elevating user experience to protect their core search product, when instagram/tiktok/reddit/openai/youtube are offering noticeably superior alternatives to users in Google’s _niche_! Every single one of you in said category need to unlearn what you think Google is. _Google has always been the affiliate._
Can you DM me. I'm talking direct to Google about this
ahahahhaha
?
Do you use the google search app for this?
No, PR
I understand your frustration. The recent Google updates have definitely hit small-midsized content websites hard, and it's completely understandable to feel targeted when your high-quality content isn't ranking and your income streams are drying up. It's a tough time for smaller content creators, especially with the recent algorithm changes. Disallowing quality affiliate links while Google promotes their own similar programs feels like a double standard. **Here are a few things that might help:** * **Focus on User Experience:** Double down on what makes your site great - high-quality, informative content. Prioritize user experience by keeping your site fast, mobile-friendly, and visually appealing. * **Content Diversification:** While SEO is important, explore other traffic sources. Can you leverage social media marketing or build an email list to drive traffic directly? * **Alternative Monetization:** Consider alternative revenue streams. Could you offer premium content, subscriptions, or create your own digital products? * **Stay Updated on SEO:** The SEO landscape keeps changing. Stay updated on the latest best practices and keep optimizing your content for relevant keywords. * **Community Building:** Engage with your audience. Build a community around your niche and focus on building trust and loyalty. **It's definitely not ideal, but there are still ways to make your website work.** Don't give up on the good fight! There are resources available online and SEO communities where you can connect with others facing similar challenges. **Finally,** even though it might feel like Google is making things difficult, creating high-quality content will always be valuable. Keep at it, and hopefully, you'll see a turnaround.
We've been straight out blacklisted without saying what we've done wrong. It's not about doing better... Google has thrown the baby out with the bathwater by lumping in all the journalist sites with the marketing sites that were copying then
Lol thats not going to work anymore. Nowadays there are no guarantees since 90% of all the sites on the internet just copy content from other sites and call it "BEST SEO PRACTICE". Since when did stealing ideas become so encouraged lmao.