Google Algorithm Updates - 2023 Ongoing Discussion

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Putting content on a ecommerce site is like 15 years old tactic.

Meaning, instead of writing about your dog snuggie on a normal wordpress site, install OSCommerce, magento, or even Shopify and write about it there.

This is why some of you bank hard, and some of you struggle. You aren't thinking out of the box until someone spells it out for you.
 
eliquid said:
Putting content on a ecommerce site is like 15 years old tactic.

Meaning, instead of writing about your dog snuggie on a normal wordpress site, install OSCommerce, magento, or even Shopify and write about it there.

This is why some of you bank hard, and some of you struggle. You aren't thinking out of the box until someone spells it out for you.
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There are ways to simulate e-commerce without being an ecommerce too.
 
You guys seeing a partial reversal?

I'm seeing some keywords reversed.

It could be RankBrain (reordering results based on user data feedback, i.e. pogo sticking) though, because of the new user data.
 
Searched a query and a major brand in my vertical occupies SERP positions #1-13 including a video

lol...

So much for diversification...

Big box retailers take over the city and all small boutiques will perish like sand being blown away by the wind.
 
I saw some chatter about UX, ads and the latest update.

Does anyone here include aggressive ads or perhaps no ads at all who can weigh in with what they experienced with the latest update?

The Mediavine FB group was going crazy about being affected by the update, but causation doesn't necessarily imply correlation.

I'm assuming many max out the numbers of ads they can show to maximise earnings, though.

We've also seen how brands that sell their own services or products have been positively impacted, which could be an EEAT thing, but they wouldn't typically use display advertising.
 
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smithy said:
Does anyone here include aggressive ads or perhaps no ads at all who can weigh in with what they experienced with the latest update?
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I've got 4 active sites.

1 got hit by around 55% - MV ads

2 were unaffected - No Ads

1 doubled traffic - No ads

I'm not saying correlation = causation but this seems to be a thing when it look at the SERPS in general (not just my niches).

Another observation is that E-com sites with /blogs/ section were either unaffected or got boosted in this update. Its baffling because they have the worse content than most niche sites, if you really want to talk about content quality. Makes you wonder if this update was really about surfacing the most helpful content or it's just an agenda they're pushing to cover up what they're really doing.
 
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smithy said:
The Mediavine FB group was going crazy about being affected by the update, but causation doesn't necessarily imply correlation.

I'm assuming many max out the numbers of ads they can show to maximise earnings, though.
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People never like to be told the harsh truth, but sometimes it's better to get.

Many people have almost unusable sites with all the ads.

Often when I google, I come in and I see one of those overspammed content sites and I nope right out of there. Not because of ad, but because I look at the lack of a good branded domain name and I see all the aggressive ads and I know it's going to be bad content.

I'm sorry to insult those of you who make these sites, yours is probably better.

It's not a given though. There are definitely many ad-driven content sites that I've been to that are good. I remember one about pets that was really excellent.

I think a good rule of thumb is: The more ads, the better your content needs to be.
 
https://twitter.com/x/status/1709106981523358063

With this reversal, I am also seeing some keywords bounce to all time highs, so we'll see if this turns out good in the long run.

It did do its job though probably, making people stop spamming AI content and sending more people out of the content site business.
 
bernard said:
https://twitter.com/x/status/1709106981523358063

With this reversal, I am also seeing some keywords bounce to all time highs, so we'll see if this turns out good in the long run.

It did do its job though probably, making people stop spamming AI content and sending more people out of the content site business.
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Ahrefs and SEMRush are so innacurate that I would not take that chart as a sign of recovery unless backed up with actual analytics.

One of my sites appears to be nose diving when the exact opposite is true. Post update its up 31% YOY.
 
MrMedia said:
Ahrefs and SEMRush are so innacurate that I would not take that chart as a sign of recovery unless backed up with actual analytics.

One of my sites appears to be nose diving when the exact opposite is true. Post update its up 31% YOY.
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Is it built on an expired domain? And how strong if so may I ask?
 
MrMedia said:
Nope. DR 35 fwiw.
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Cool, there have to be winners when there are losers.

I had a small site seeing all time great numbers too. Up like 50% year over year. Very small scale, but interesting to see, best rankings in 5 years.
 
bernard said:
People never like to be told the harsh truth, but sometimes it's better to get.

Many people have almost unusable sites with all the ads.
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Yeah man, exactly.

There's a lot of entitlement and a lot of delusion and it can only be masked by success for so long.

It's easy for "publishers" (using that term as loosely as possible) to feel like they've really done something special when the numbers are going up and they're being rewarded. That's why they feel entitled to it, and get upset when it's taken away.

But I reckon plenty of folks should feel blessed and lucky to still have the 50% or 60% of their traffic that's left. Like how much value are we creating when the model is...
  1. Buy a domain that earned links for a different purpose, years ago...
  2. Look at what everyone else in the niche is ranking for...
  3. Get someone to re-write those articles to a point where your site becomes the same topics, the same titles, the same keywords, the same length, the same words as so many other sites...
  4. Fill it up with an annoying amount of ads that destroy the user experience...
  5. Throw up some fake author profiles, toss up a fake Twitter and LinkedIn if you really want to feel like you're doing something...
  6. Buy some iffy links that are, at best, marketed in a super misleading way...
  7. And somehow, Google was/is STILL REWARDING THIS.
  8. Lose half your traffic and feel like you've done anything to earn or deserve the remaining half.
IT DID WORK.

It's worked for a lot of people. It's still working for people.

When we're using correlation tools and keyword tools to dig up the same stuff everyone else is doing, then convincing ourselves "well.. mine's BETTER. It's QUALITY", and just spinning up 100,000 versions collectively of the same 100 websites... How is that helpful? What value is created? Why should that be rewarded?

This isn't mom's fridge, your work isn't special just because you made it. It's not quality just because a salesperson told you it is or because the article didn't have any red squiggly lines under the words.

There's some people who are like, "Welp, it was fun while it lasted. I was in an insanely high-margin business where I was able to make some decent coin, but I'm not interested in actually writing a bunch of amazing content myself and taking my effort to the next level to keep up, so it's time to pivot because I know I can do better elsewhere." Huge shout-out to those people, they aren't delusional or entitled. They saw an opportunity, and they see it fading. Smart people.

I saw a post where someone was like... I can't make better content that my competitors, I can't market it better, I can't do this better, I can't do that better, I don't even want to bother making better tools cos there would be upkeep. What are we doing here lol.

I'm not saying variations of the paint-by-numbers stuff can't work. There are still people who are making it work. But for anyone who isn't there yet... If you want the low risk, low creativity, paint-by-numbers, follow-the-instructions approach with much better odds of getting to 150k, 200k a year as quickly as possible... Go to school, learn sales operations, learn SalesForce, learn some marketable skills. Tip: Look into non-tech related jobs at tech companies, you don't need to code to get an amazing job in tech.

Or study a trade and in a few years you can start a business and hire plumbers in your city instead of writers on the other side of the world. The margins won't be 90% and you'll have to leave the house, though (That's why I haven't done it, personally).

Now, if you genuinely enjoy creating content and you get a thrill from putting your heart into a piece and then putting it out there and seeing how it does... There's still room for that, imo. Or maybe I'm just another delusional person who is coping. We'll see!

I think Barstool is a good example of an actual publisher who doesn't seem to be getting got by algo whims. Find a niche where you can be the Barstool Sports. It doesn't have to be an edgy sports site. You could be the Barstool of gardening. You could be the Barstool of boardgames.

At a certain point, even the goldrush of the actual goldrush ended and stabilized. And after the goldrush, I'm sure there were still a few prospectors chipping away at the scraps with little chisels, drowned out by the roars of massive mining machines operating down the road, doing a billion times the work for a fraction of the effort or time. The margins are smaller, but they tend to be that way in real, sustainable businesses that aren't based around trying to trick an algorithm into sending you more traffic than you deserve.

Some people are so afraid of chasing the next shiny thing that they'll keep looking for the old shiny thing forever and never finding it. It's okay to pivot. It's actually good to see better potential in something and to pursue it. You'll never cash in your sunk costs, especially time.

Content creation isn't dying. Websites aren't dying. It's the very specific paint-by-numbers cashgrab of adding zero value that's starting to be less worth the time. Good.

(Lol Bernard, I just realized it can look like this whole rant was directed at you cos of the quote, the only part directed at you is the part where I agreed with you at the top haha).
 
October 2023 Spam Update
October 4th, 2023
Google released the October 2023 Spam Update today, which "improves its coverage in many languages and spam types."

Google said the update “aims to clean up several types of spam that our community members reported in Turkish, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Hindi, Chinese, and other languages.”

It should "reduce the visible spam in search results, particularly when it comes to cloaking, hacked, auto-generated, and scraped spam.”

It will take a few weeks to roll out.
 
Ryuzaki said:
October 2023 Spam Update
October 4th, 2023
Google released the October 2023 Spam Update today, which "improves its coverage in many languages and spam types."

Google said the update “aims to clean up several types of spam that our community members reported in Turkish, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Hindi, Chinese, and other languages.”

It should "reduce the visible spam in search results, particularly when it comes to cloaking, hacked, auto-generated, and scraped spam.”

It will take a few weeks to roll out.
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How low can you go?

To the window!
To the wall!
To the sweat drop down my balls!
 
mj22 said:
I have 4 sites that got slapped out of 32 i manage, pain in the motherfucking ass these recent updates have been.
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It sucks but will weed out a lot of non serious players and thin out the herd. Only those that are seriously motivated and know what they are doing will remain.
 
Too early to tell, but some of the more weird drops I had with the Helpful Content Update seems to have reversed. It's not all of them, but definitely some of the worse.

I would say, it could seem as if Intent has been turned up again, though it would seem as for more competitive queries where intent is met, the HCU factors are still in play.

Core update? or a reversal by the HCU under another name?
 
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bernard said:
Too early to tell, but some of the more weird drops I had with the Helpful Content Update seems to have reversed. It's not all of them, but definitely some of the worse.

I would say, it could seem as if Intent has been turned up again, though it would seem as for more competitive queries where intent is met, the HCU factors are still in play.

Core update? or a reversal by the HCU under another name?
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I guess it is a reversal under a different name indeed. But lets see.
 
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