Google Algorithm Updates - 2024 Ongoing Discussion

I talked to an affiliate management this week and he showed me the top affiliate for a dating product. Just gonna share this value here.

They adapted to the algo change and are doing good. What they did was instead of ranking new sites, they just bought guest posts on those major sites SEO complain about like Forbes and whatever. Then the article is targeting one keyword and the article promotes their affiliate link.

So instead of ranking a whole site with many articles, they rank one page for one keyword. Let’s say it is $1,000 for the guest post and $500 in backlinking. If the product is a SAAS with a recurring subscription it’ll be profitable quickly. Less capital investment with this method too.

Also ok a human standpoint the landing page is awesome. Reads way better and looks legit compared to an affiliate review website.
 
just a quick update. havent touched a thing since the end of may. all of a sudden, a few days ago, one of my 'best' kind of articles started to rank in the top 3 again. The rest are still page 3. I'm not sure what to think of this; I would say it makes me even more confused, lol.
 
Google volatility is going up right now with no major update announced. Could they have made some adjustment the tracker's need to fix? Who knows (since nobody is ranking enough to have reasonable data).

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They did push an update yesterday to try to filter out Deepfakes from Consensual Nudies, presumably of actresses. I'm sure this is just some new filtering of domains or pages based on keywords or reputation, bundled up with their revenge porn and leaks sub-algo. But it's certainly not responsible for this volatility.
 
A trusted SEO friend of mine who speaks Russian was on a Russian SEO webinar and he said that the presenter made a clear case, that Google rankings nowadays corresponds to branded search queries. If you have branded search queries, you can rank. Without, you can't.

To me, It makes sense. Google's pushing EEAT a lot, but how do they know if a site has EEAT? They don't. They check how users behave and one way is to see if people have been searching for that brand for awhile. If so, they probably have some form of EEAT. Hence why we keep on seeing huge publishing sites, which are all household brands that are owned by a handful of holding companies who have a handful of journalists behind them, ranking for review terms.

To me, this is yet another reason why SEO should not be your main channel. If something else is your main channel, such as display, you'll have cash flow to invest into SEO while SEO is in the google dance, and you'll generate branded queries for your site. I also think the era of flipping amazon affiliate sites whose sole channel is SEO is long dead now, partly due to this. You can see it if you go on EmpireFlippers. it's all FBA listings now. You rarely see 100% SEO plays on there anymore. Sad. But good for anyone who made the cut and are safe behind the huge SEO barrier to entry.
 
Marelli said:
Total nonsense, but it's useful to have such public consensus from 'gurus'.
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Maybe it is total SEO bullshit, but from a business point of view, I'd rather have a business where people are searching for my brand than one that doesn't :smile:
 
People searching your brand is undoubtedly a positive signal because there must be upstream activities that precipitate those brand searches. News virality, community engagement, collaborations, social media success etc. To achieve these things you must be offering some type of content that humans get excited about and a marketing strategy that deploys said content to the appropriate eyeballs.

Now are brand signals absolutely required to rank? Obviously not. Just look at all the spam garbage Google is ranking today. Nobody is searching some obscure cloud hosting subdomain for dick pills or betting odds, they rank because of the link authority inherent to the parasitic host.

I think we all know these things so there's not reason to overreact or get hostile. The more we share the more we learn, even if what is being shared happens to be old news to you or I.
 

August 2024 Core Update​

Starts today, August 15th. It's your basic "demotes low-value content and promotes high value content" update. They expect it to take a full month to roll out this time and this may be the new norm, so they can have a more gradual implementation to make course corrections along the way.
 
harrytwatter said:
People searching your brand is undoubtedly a positive signal because there must be upstream activities that precipitate those brand searches. News virality, community engagement, collaborations, social media success etc. To achieve these things you must be offering some type of content that humans get excited about and a marketing strategy that deploys said content to the appropriate eyeballs.

Now are brand signals absolutely required to rank? Obviously not. Just look at all the spam garbage Google is ranking today. Nobody is searching some obscure cloud hosting subdomain for dick pills or betting odds, they rank because of the link authority inherent to the parasitic host.

I think we all know these things so there's not reason to overreact or get hostile. The more we share the more we learn, even if what is being shared happens to be old news to you or I.
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Only because I can't sleep and I like to argue :smile:

This is a site I'm working on. It gets 5,000 branded queries a day and I doubled traffic so far in a month by publishing 360 AI written content..... it doesn't sound amazing until you find out the domain has 40 referring domains and is DR 10 on Ahrefs :smile:

@Marelli The gurus are right.

Like what those Googlers are saying, links aren't the #1 ranking metric nowadays. For me I put traffic as #1. #2 would be title tag. #3 would be links.

And, let's cut to the case, we're here to make money. If you spend money on guest posts, you're spending money. If you have traffic to the site, you're making money. It's just better to have traffic to the site and make money, then increase your expenses by buying more guest posts.

If what I'm telling you is stuff you already know, then you know I'm right! As for me, I'm a millionaire right now and want to get to 10 million before I turn 40, which is in 5 years. Then 100 million before I'm 50. Going after technical things that currently work right now but will piss off Google engineers is no way to get rich. That's not how you build a business. I've been on here long enough to know that many of you guys are great technicians and SEOs but terrible businessmen. I'm guilty of this too since I got started on here, but I know better now.
 
real said:
How do you get 46.7% Average CTR? :smile:
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It's branded queries. I said that. They're looking for this site and their search intent is to find the site. Hence how CTR can be so high. That's also why this site ranks so easily with 40 backlinks.

I've been saying this for a year now, SEO should not be your main channel and, if it is, you don't have a real business. If its your 2nd or 3nd channel, then SEO has better success. That's how the game is nowadays... Then there's grey hat people pointing out case studies where a l33t hacker ranked with a no name site and claim that the algorithm is shit because of this, but those cases won't be in business in 5 years. It's actually quite stupid to go in that direction, when going the opposite way of making a real business and a real brand is so much easier. Plus, if you go the black hat route, you end up being 100% dependent on Google and they'll be mad at you for doing black hat shit and then fuck you over. Such a stupid cycle.

Just create a real business. Jesus Christ. Some of you are too stupid to be rich. Also, some people here are richer than me, I just gotta say that. I'm not the richest person on the forum.
 
Ryuzaki said:

August 2024 Core Update​

Starts today, August 15th. It's your basic "demotes low-value content and promotes high value content" update. They expect it to take a full month to roll out this time and this may be the new norm, so they can have a more gradual implementation to make course corrections along the way.
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So far what people are seeing is those who cried the loudest have been rewarded
 
yea i have not cried or touched anything, just let it be, and im seeing a reversal as well. HCU killed my traffic by 80%. This core boosted me a lot in the first day and im now just 30% down compared to the february levels. I hope its not the ranking bug they are talking about and it really is a reversal, its been tough 6 months.
 
Is anyone seeing changes in Europe?

I'm not seeing any differences at all. SERPs are unchanged in the countries I track.

Usually we seem to have a 1-3 days delay, even with core updates. I hope that's why I cant see any changes.
 
Trump said:
Is anyone seeing changes in Europe?

I'm not seeing any differences at all. SERPs are unchanged in the countries I track.

Usually we seem to have a 1-3 days delay, even with core updates. I hope that's why I cant see any changes.
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In NL and ES I don't see any changes so far on my affiliate sites. But I am not tracking many sites, so no idea about the bigger picture.
 
BakerStreet said:
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Only because I can't sleep and I like to argue :smile:

This is a site I'm working on. It gets 5,000 branded queries a day and I doubled traffic so far in a month by publishing 360 AI written content..... it doesn't sound amazing until you find out the domain has 40 referring domains and is DR 10 on Ahrefs :smile:

@Marelli The gurus are right.

Like what those Googlers are saying, links aren't the #1 ranking metric nowadays. For me I put traffic as #1. #2 would be title tag. #3 would be links.

And, let's cut to the case, we're here to make money. If you spend money on guest posts, you're spending money. If you have traffic to the site, you're making money. It's just better to have traffic to the site and make money, then increase your expenses by buying more guest posts.

If what I'm telling you is stuff you already know, then you know I'm right! As for me, I'm a millionaire right now and want to get to 10 million before I turn 40, which is in 5 years. Then 100 million before I'm 50. Going after technical things that currently work right now but will piss off Google engineers is no way to get rich. That's not how you build a business. I've been on here long enough to know that many of you guys are great technicians and SEOs but terrible businessmen. I'm guilty of this too since I got started on here, but I know better now.
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What AI writer are you using? Do you do a thorough edit before posting online? Tks!
 
There was also apparently an error in Google's search results that was announced alongside the update, which is now resolved. So far, it's looking like more rankings lost for me in this update. Have seen another 30% or so drop over the past 5 days.

Overall, I've lost almost 99% of my Google traffic over the past year. 10,000+ clicks per day down to ~600. Each subsequent update takes more and more. Any improvements have been short-lived.

Does not make a whole lot of sense to me. Straight up cannot figure out what they want me to do.

Not trying to bitch about it. It's just reality, and it's an absolute bitch.
 
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chubes said:
Does not make a whole lot of sense to me. Straight up cannot figure out what they want me to do.
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What they want? They want you to straight up quit SEO and delete your website (s) from the internet. It saves them infrastructure/crawling/indexing costs and also resources spent in building complex systems to understand and combat content spam.

Our websites & free traffic they send to us is of no benefit to them and their future. Infact, I dare say that a "Perfect SERP" will do more harm to them than good. The more chaotic the SERPS (like in the last 1 year), the more money they make. The proof is here:

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I saw this earlier today and i couldn't agree more (Tweet from Joe youngblood):

https://twitter.com/x/status/1825016953766818010

I don't believe the "rewarding helpful content" HCU bullshit. How does great content/SERPS make them more money? IT DOESN'T!.

The HCU was just a smoke screen for a much bigger agenda. Its why it was suddenly merged in to the core algo after the September carnage. Damage done, goodbye!:

Google is releasing the March 2024 core update and a number of spam updates (aka March 2024 spam update). Also, Google’s helpful content system has been incorporated into its overall core ranking system. - https://searchengineland.com/google...-core-update-and-multiple-spam-updates-438144
 
I'm tracking things daily for one of our projects in the Home niche:

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Although there visible movements, only 1/8 content website has seen significant recovery so far. The brands are still going strong. We (SITE 1) are yet to see any significant improvement.

I honestly hope we recover, not because i want to keep building niche sites but i want to spam the hell out of Google and grab as much cash as possible this time.

I'll advise everyone to not get carried away by August recoveries. Its only a small window to grab as much cash as you can before shit finally hits the fan. SEO niche sites are never going to be the same "full time income" again.

The earlier you pivot, the better for you.
 
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So far, my site has recovered about 90% of its traffic. However, the past 6 months taught me a lesson and for the future, I'm focusing on diversifying my traffic and I ll take what google sends as a bonus. Its just very unstable and I got no guarantee the next update wont wipe it out again.
 
chubes said:
There was also apparently an error in Google's search results that was announced alongside the update, which is now resolved. So far, it's looking like more rankings lost for me in this update. Have seen another 30% or so drop over the past 5 days.

Overall, I've lost almost 99% of my Google traffic over the past year. 10,000+ clicks per day down to ~600. Each subsequent update takes more and more. Any improvements have been short-lived.

Does not make a whole lot of sense to me. Straight up cannot figure out what they want me to do.

Not trying to bitch about it. It's just reality, and it's an absolute bitch.
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Google sent a CLEAR message a year ago, when the HCU hit. It was "be a brand, a BIG brand". Essentially, it was a "If you are small, you are fucked".

It's simple - don't rely on Google for traffic, ever again. Build your socials, build an email list, a newsletter, create your own products, and act like a brand.

The problem is - that's a lot of work. Let me say it again - it's A LOT of work. It also costs money, so it's extra hard. But it pays off, and... Ar least you won't go through a maniacal episode every time Google shakes its tail.

Even if you have only 1,000 subscribers, they are yours.
 
GeorgeG said:
So far, my site has recovered about 90% of its traffic. However, the past 6 months taught me a lesson and for the future, I'm focusing on diversifying my traffic and I ll take what google sends as a bonus. Its just very unstable and I got no guarantee the next update wont wipe it out again.
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90% recovery from HCU? Could you please provide a screenshot of that?
 
GeorgeG said:
well technically from the march update, that integrated the hcu in the core algo. Here is a screenshot from the console:
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Technically that's totally not the same thing. I still didn't see any site recovered after been hammered by the September ‘23 HCU. However, I did rush to check my analytics the moment I read your post
 
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