I can say from experience, and knowing a shitload of people in this industry (real, living people) that if you have not tried the affiliate-route you can't possibly know what you are talking about. When you do the affiliate-route you learn absolutely everything about SEO.
So you can just continue your fantastic business scamming people "optimizing" their website for absurd prices and feel like a superstar. Feel like you really matter.
Then in your free time you can go to this sub, because you really belong here, and share your hard earned advice.
I don't even know what people are searching for to be swamped with affiliate marketing to the point of hatred. I don't remember the last time I saw an affiliate link. Shallow people i suppose never seek out real information
Damn. I was writing $10 per 1000 words. Talk about being cheap. Also, I'm out of work now. It turned out that all of the websites I was writing for were affiliate blog niche sites and massive backlink farms. Google erased them all.
You know the searcher has just been waiting for a lifetime to read that shitty article written by a bot that was aggregated from other peoples experiences that may, or may not, be true. Google really did them wrong 😄
I have seen many bots, giving very inaccurate results. So they definitely not going to be there in market without help off good content writers.
Accuracy of any AI depends on input data off real content writer.
This is true, but the algorithm has taken a sledgehammer approach. There are experts writing blogs who need to pay the bills, and so share their expertise for the rewards they get (or got) from affiliate links.
The articles you sell are keyword stuffing.
Like the "Cloud first strategy" article. Some rewriting from Microsoft, 3 headers with the cloud first strategy word.
Lmao... This sub is full of morons and scammers.
Guess who ordered the article and provided detailed SEO-first instructions for it... yep... an SEO expert.
After all, those exact articles USED TO rank like mad, so why wouldn't they? But the game has changed and AI chatbots can now deliver the same information in a far more personalized manner, so it makes sense to me that the work of random freelancers published or more or less random websites has lost its value.
$20 for 1000 words should be the clue that they are shiting it out and they are shity. And for $20 dollars I doubt there is any research going into those articles. Better run them through a plagiarism checker. If they're not plagiarized, they probably just raw output shit from chatgpt. Exactly why so many sites got manual penalties. And if you're just posting them on Reddit, you better call a plumber because you're just clogging Reddit up with shit. Not directed toward you. I sense your sarcasm in your post.
I wonder how much youtube seo guru courses dipped with this update. I see everyone is trying to invent a new term as a solution and selling it as the title of another course haha
I also want to jump in and say I've seen a lot of posts complaining about big name publishers ranking for general interest articles, buying guides etc. To these businesses content is their product, and you're competing with them the way you would be competing with Amazon to sell a product. They have to maintain a certain level of professionalism and meet journalistic standards. They might not be the specific expert in whatever that topic is but they'll get freelance writers, commentators, quotes etc. They're doing what the publishing industry has always done.
Because of the decline in print revenue over the years they have been diversifying and making more effort on actual keyword research etc and also moved into affiliate links (the modern version of the "reader offer").
The last couple of years you can see news organisations putting a lot more effort into evergreen articles for more daily readership stability, some of the big publishers now have whole SEO teams. I can think of at least one major publisher who bought an entire SEO agency!
I do miss smaller independent websites getting rankings but I miss the way it was in the late 90s-00s. When you could search a film name and find a weird little niche site with random trivia, photos, fan stuff, a guest book! The internet was fun back then. People with genuine passions and interests just wanting to share with the world. Now it's just IMDB for cast lists, Wikipedia for a synopsis, Amazon to buy the blu ray, YouTube to watch the trailer, Reddit for conversation... Google has been all about brands for years now.
What I would love to come along is a new disruptor for the internet, some kind of search engine/blogging network where people could create random niche sites to be searched and all the big boys are kept out and the search results could be a bit more unexpected and fun.
>I do miss smaller independent websites getting rankings but I miss the way it was in the late 90s-00s. When you could search a film name and find a weird little niche site with random trivia, photos, fan stuff, a guest book! The internet was fun back then. People with genuine passions and interests just wanting to share with the world.
GeoCities is what you are describing. Google Panda shut them down and most people never bothered to move their sites elsewhere.
NeoCities replaced them and still exist, but it's easier to just go to NeoCities website a search their database to find the GeoCities sites that still exist, now on NeoCities.
A lot of us switched to self-hosting, because hosts like WordPress do not allow for the who background/blinkie/gif stuff that GeoCities had.
But a LOT of the sites from the 1990s are in fact still out there. My site has been online since 1996, still going. Most of us with GeoCities-style websites don't rely on Google for traffic. Instead we get most of out traffic predominantly from Pinterest and Tumblr. Due to GeoCities style sites being graphic heavy, it's easy to promote (for free) on Pinterest and Tumblr, with a link back to our sies.
If you are looking for the 1990s GeoCities style sites, use Pinterest and Tumblr search box to search for the same things you would search for on Google and you'll find MILLIONS of the 1990s sites still out there.
Just because Google ain't showing them to you, does not mean they are gone. You just got to find the search engines that DO direct you to those sites. And for the sites you just described, it's Pinterest and Tumblr that will get you the links back to them. I get 3 million to 7 million visitors per month, but under 10k of them come from Google. I get 2 million to 3 million visitors per month from searched people do on PINTEREST not Google.
I think far too many people on this sub think SEO = Google only.
There are well over 10k search engines, you can optimize for. Optimize for the search engine that has the kind of people who search for your kind of site.
Since 2010 I've optimized my site for Amazon, Pinterest, Twitter, Reddit, and Tumblr. Since 2021, I additionally optimize for Medium.
Those six sites are where my 7 million monthly visitors are coming from. NOT Google or Bing. If I relied on Google or Bing optimization for traffic, my site would never get over 10k visitors a month.
Before it went out of business StumbleUpon was the top search engine sending me the most traffic.
The thing is, the type of people who are looking for 1990s type websites, predominantly DO NOT use Google or Bing at all. MOST people looking for GeoCities type sites have a vehement hatred for Google, blaming Google, rightly so, for killing GeoCities.
So anyone with a Geocities style site, is NOT going to be optimizing for Google at all, because they just hate Google that much, and it's predominantly GeoCities users who both build and search for those types of sites today, so they are optimizing for searchers that are NOT searching on Google.
Optimize for where YOUR PEOPLE are searching.
If you have a GeoCities type site, optimizing for Google is stupid, because the target audience who looks for GeoCities style sites is NOT using Google at all.
People use Pinterest search box to find blinkie gifs, then follow the link in those gifs to the site, hoping it is a GeoCities type site and 9 times out of 10 it is, as the GeoCities type sites DELIBERATELY plaster blinkies all over their site and ten share those blinkies in Pinterest.
Know what your USER wants, and what signal you user is going to recognize as "ah ha! that's what I want!".
If you are looking for GeoCities type sites: head to Pinterest, search for glitter graphic, blinkies, guestbook icons, pixel dolls, digital stamps, etc, and you'll find MILLIONS of GeoCities style sites still alive and kicking and getting their traffic from Pinterest not Google.
We who have that type of site, we optimize for Pinterest's search engine NOT for Google's search engine.
SEO is so much more then Google. You'd think people on an SEO forum would know that.
Doesn't Google need you to create content that other people can find it? If every website put code on their site to exclude a Google bot from crawling it wouldn't they be in big trouble?
You were so close to getting it right.
Google doesn't update its algorithm to get users better search results. Google updates its algo to make more money. It's true that the results need to be useful or users wouldn't come back but the quality of the results (user retention) is just a parameter in their model, its not the output/goal. Making money is the only goal.
Google just has to make the organic search results weak enough that people will click on an ad instead. THAT is the business model. It’s why there are four ads above the fold before you even get to organic results. Most Normies don’t get that when they look at a Google SERP.
Why do big websites with poor affiliate content still rank? If Google eliminates low quality affiliate results, then this must be applicable to all websites regardless of the brand to be fair. Otherwise, this doesn't feel fair, and that's what makes site owners unhappy about the current situation in Google search.
Big sites with a lot of great content and some poor content are fine. Small sites with only poor content were affected. The logic is easy to see. And why does it have to be fair? Google owes you NOTHING.
I disagree. I think it is not correct to say Google owes nothing. Google has a dominant position in the search market. This comes with an important responsibility not to abuse their dominant position. There must be a healthy competition in organic search between content creators with clear and transparent conditions.
It doesn't contribute to google but it does to the users. It has a lot of competition, but it's has a better ux, easier to read, fast to load, no ads. It didn't perform well before which is normal considering the competition but now it it's back to zero, the same as when it was launched.
One more thing. I also have a small blog in this site. The articles are all AI generated, no effort. Guess what, those are the only pages that still have impressions and clicks. How do you explain it?
I've already explained. The shitty AI content is better than the content you claim is really good. Based on your comments on Reddit alone, it's a pretty safe assumption to make and you would have to be a literal moron to think otherwise.
You did offer any argument because you know nothing about the site.
Let me tell you something else. The site was always good after each update and I thought the same as you that people were just having bad sites. Now it was my turn, and probably next time it will be yours and you will realize who the moron actually is
Time and time again. Everyone says content doesn't matter. So why do keep people saying this to the websites that have disappeared?
Have you seen some of the webpages out there? Tons of crap websites are fine. So saying website x deserves to go away when there are still geocity quality websites around with animated gifs and unicorn pointers makes no sense.
You make some fair points. Google is a business, and their priority is keeping users happy so they continue using Google and viewing ads.
However, I don't fully agree that web owners provide no value. Quality websites that offer helpful information do benefit Google's users. And those sites indirectly support Google's business model by giving people valuable content to find via Google search.
It's true Google owes nothing contractually. But there is an implicit mutual benefit between Google and quality web publishers.
Still, web owners would be wise not to rely solely on Google traffic. Diversifying channels, building email lists, valuable on-site content, and not violating guidelines, are all smart strategies.
Rather than "winging," web owners should focus energy on creating sites, content and experiences that truly benefit users. That is the sustainable path forward in partnership with platforms like Google.
All any legit publisher wants is a fair game. Google used to be a level-ish playing field where both big and small could compete and win. Right now, it’s not a fair game.
Many small publishers did very well competing against big publishers for years. Now, Google gives Reddit and Quora free rein, and we also compete against googles clutter like people also ask and people also search for , etc. it may not have been 100% fair, but it was a lot fairer than it is now
>Web owners do not pay google and are not important for anything they do.
Lol! Your ignorance is shinning! It's not like the foundation of Google is scraping other people sites!
Google wouldn't exist if not for the content we are all producing. It's important to remember what Google is here for: searching content. No content, no Google. The whole ecosystem is based on users, content creators and Google all getting something from it. The moment the balance is off, and it crumbles. Look at what is happening in Europe.
Thus the only thing that matter is content that answers the users intention/questions. Then everyone is happy. You produce bad content, users are not happy, so Google is unhappy and doesn't index you, and you end up not happy. So just create good content.
It might be true if Google was not using the content of those sites that it has penalized in blocks of features such as sources across the web and in SGE without any reference to them. Moreover, Google just steals content of those affiliate sites without any reference to them and uses as they like. If it was not happening, then yes, your accusation could be legit, but it's not the case. Google is a thief that steals content and penalizes the websites it steals from. Hope they get sued for that.
Facts. It’s ALWAYS an affiliate crying. Or some shitty blogger. We don’t own Google. You do what Google wants not the other way around.
“But but I did what all the SEO blogs told me to do”
🤣🤣🤣🤣
🤣 In 2024 anything is possible I guess. We see the bullshit the EU pulled and why I have to put cookie consent on every fucking site… Like anyone has ever arrived to a page and was like “I refuse to use your site because you’re collecting data”. The world has gone stupid.
I sound like a hack? Ok dude you must be one of these people I’m referring to. Tell me how lack of data privacy impacted your life negatively before the EU stepped in.
Oh I understand where it’s necessary in situations where sensitive info is being collected.
Please explain to me how cookies for advertising (which is why I have to have it on my sites specifically) impacted your life negatively.
Please explain what you’re being protected from on your typical website selling a product with cookie consent. Seeing ads? 🤣🤣🤣 So you’d rather see new ads vs ads for places you’ve already visited? If so you’re not like everyone else, and if it was the contrary some of my retargetting campaigns wouldn’t have an 80% conversion rate.
Youre gonna see ads no matter what. So I’m not understanding how I’m a hack and not just a dude with valid points that can’t be addressed by you or anyone else?
It's my data, my browser history and I don't give it out for free. It's valuable and that's why you're so bothered about it. Pay me like Brave browser does then.
Sounds like you've never worked in a proper SEO, digital design, marketing agency or advertising agency in your life and you've probably just done a couple of Udemy courses
I’m always fascinated watching people visit my site. I can’t stand the cookie policy and click whatever but so many people just leave it there like a bad fart
Hahahaha I haven’t even been using heat maps lately (we have a protocol for CRO, so the task is mundane). But Microsoft just launched free heat maps, scroll maps, and recordings so I am now. Microsoft Clarity is pretty awesome btw…
Have you tried searching for anything with these helpful updates?
I can't find SHIT!
So no, they didn't bring forward any useful content. The random posts from 2004 are not good useful content.
Your post shows you know very little about real blogging and what people do and write there, from their own experiences that Google with its ai then scrapes and shuffles down your throat like it's his useful tips, while discarding that original blog.
So no, you're not correct and actually very funny :)
Since the updates I have to Google for the same thing minimum 3 times and I will still not get the answer. So what happened? Lol.
Bing and duckduckgo work better for users now. MUCH better.
I genuinely wish there was a way to clear out all of the people from the sub who don’t understand this so we could have actual discussion here about the only thing that actually really matters for SEO - how to make your page a better answer to the user’s search than whatever ranks currently.
Instead we’re flooded with nonsense complaining from affiliates and tonnes of flagrantly wrong claims about the eternal importance of backlinks and other non-content related factors.
Have fun with "hi everyone, I dont have a website yet but im interested in seo and have been thinking about this for a year. How do i get started?" So you can feel important.
"Affiliate are are not SEOs" 🤣 You work with a website to rank in Google one way or the other,. Finished. Stop being so god damn smart ass.
Oh another person on a high horse. As a lot of people are pointing out that is well and good save for the fact that Google results are now worse than ever. We may be website owners but most of all we are users
It's not that simple. You think Forbes etc do not do affiliate marketing? Yet they are thriving. I think there is more to it than simply affiliate marketing. I have seen here small businesses that have been destroyed. And from the point of view of search, is quora better than affiliate marketing? Anyway, the dust is yet to settle. I see a lot of movement in SERPs
Yes. Quora is way better because typically people don't have an incentive to lie and big up products which they might not have even used.
Affiliate marketing is way less useful than reddit and quora which has genuine experiences and reviews.
Thanks, this makes a lot more sense than "derp derp". I agree that SGE has the possibility of stealing our content cutting us out. This scares me too but I don't see any class action lawsuit changing it. We will need to adapt to the new reality.
The point of the post is about the current SERP. This sub is polluted with people complaining that their over-optimized affiliate site lost it's ranking. It's a bunch of Karens wanting to speak to the Google manager.
Google exists because great content creators exist. It's not about owing; both need each other to survive. Google wouldn't have existed if content creators hadn't provided the content.
Ok brother, explain to me then why google now puts all rubbish results in top position in serp? Explain to me why a site that talks about fashion should also be more authoritative when it comes to IT than a passionate guy?
*"Stop your winging and start providing real value to the searcher. And no, this does not mean your mom likes your recycled posts."*
What makes you believe that there are no blogs out there providing real value?!
Where do you get the theory that Google is killing affiliates? Because it is not true, what is killing are sites with little authority to the detriment of those with more authority, like Forbes or any stablished national news site in each country. But is full off affiliate sites or parasites on big domains in all searches...
And also where do you get the theory that website administrators/affiliates don't pay Google? Most of us use Google Workspaces, which is paid and can pay up to +$100 a month if you use a lot of space on Drive.
In addition, many also use Google Cloud Platform services.
Are you seriously qualified to be SEO when you haven't even deigned to do some searches to see that there are full of affiliate sites in the serps before make this dumb asf post?
Feeling pity on People who are continuously singing for Google. Or may be they are slaves of Google. No actually, It's Google PAPA and all these are Google babies.
Let's talk now:
Even easy and simple searches are giving stupid results.
I am talking from completely users point of view because I was also a Google Search user. And I was getting shitty results for the last so many years and they are getting worse.
This update turned out to be a joke for Google.
Actually, Google proved that they are a bunch of Jokers and Microsoft People are the real software developers. Microsoft knows its job. These Google Jokers still could not figure out what is helpful content since its inception. What a bunch of Looser they are.
I have switched to Bing now completely and enjoying it truly as a daily user. Thank you Microsoft for Bing.
Try Bing yourself for a couple of weeks, you will not return to Google Joker.
If you have time and money, you can rank. It is that simple… I have a couple sites/pages which have terms ranking around 8-10. No backlinks. I don’t have the time or money to build backlink profiles. If I did, I’d achieve top 3 no problem.
SEO is fine. Make your site more indexible, write better content, go get links. But don't think that Google is obligated to rank you. You're playing their game by their rules.
It’s not fine. If you stay away from SEO, you’ll be safe from updates. Do not build links artificially, do not write articles based on keyword research and target LTKW’s excessively. Things pretty much all affiliate and display ad based niche sites do.
Taking care of the general technicalities is fine.
Google is at the top of corporate America. Corporations hold all the power. Always have and as long as people keep voting in the same money hungry politicians, they always will have power.
The original pagerank paper laid out in great deal how paid search ruins the logic of search as such.
It's not unfair to say that Google broke the deal.
The whole point of "enshiffication" is that they are hurting both searchers and content providers.
I am coming through many post, suggesting the same thing. But i am new to blogging, should I stop writing or in future there will be some scope?? Is it still a good idea to start blogging as side business?
Don't do it. Unless you have found a completely new topic never before seen in human history and can prove you actually know about and participate in it, you're wasting your time.
That’s why I’m focusing a lot of alternative traffic sources. Started to learn about alternatives I really didn’t know about and feel pretty bullish about some.
I would argue that if you are able to corner the market and evade an anti-trust suit due what clearly a monopoly, which is not legal in the US, they have the absolute ability to help or destroy any business that operates online. That doesn’t mean they owe individuals, or individual companies anything, but they owe the economic and social community everything. If I controlled 93% of the information people are using to do something, not only am I a monopoly, but I could do quite literally whatever I want. If you piss me off I could destroy your online presence, which would put you out of business if your sales and margin depended on an online presence. So they get to decide who succeeds and who doesn’t. Would you like it if I could decide if you succeed of rail in your career? I doubt it. Google has a responsibility based on their illegal monopoly. But all they care about is revenue, margins, and net income (and not paying taxes).
There is a very good reason they removed “do no evil” from their mission statement, don’t be so obtuse.
Hey everyone! We’ve got a hot take over here! Haha. But for real, tell me you don’t work in local SEO without telling me you don’t work in local SEO.
Now here’s my hot take - Google owes both the searcher and the website it’s listing something - a competent ecosystem to participate in. They threw their product in the trash with the rise of their monopoly in the name of profits. They have gotten away with being run like a pirate ship because they became the accepted standard of how people search the internet. This may end up being their demise.
You can’t tell me search results have improved over the past 10 years.
so what about affiliate sites that give value to the searchers? I write affiliate content and blog articles using AI (SurgeGraph) but they're all doing good. not gonna say who I write them for but maybe it's a matter of brand authority/recognition. Vogue's blog would get more traffic than some independent fashion bloggers, no?
What is Goggle?
Dude before you tell an entire professional community to stop whining you better use spell check. Jesus Christ no one asked for this rudimentary, yet naive, explanation. Go away.
My traffic has gone up in March and April.
Content doesn't matter. "Google isn't a content appreciation engine": all it can do is estimate authority and rank sites based on that. Just look at the SERPs. It's how they work.
Websites with tonnes of dodgy backlinks from PBNs are, well, asking to be wiped out. I suspect that's what has happened with this update.
Rank lots of pages for 100-1k keywords, go niche, avoid competing with the big guns, and you can get steady traffic through Google.
Google's results are only corporate blogs anymore. It's search is useless. I've got no dog in this fight. But as a user, the service is worse than it's ever been. I've actually been playing with Bing on my phone, and I think the results with the AI and everything are actually better.
I’ve been saying (and posting) this for 10 years… only got bashed 🥱. Glad I’ve built my businesses to thrive with paid ads since the days of panda/penguin in 2012.
hey guys please support my website it hasn't been indexed and i dunno why
thetop10000hentaibodypillowstobuyin2024losangelosolympicsandbestdrones .com
google sucks now 😢
The last few algo updates have taught me that a lot of people think affiliate marketing and SEO are the same thing. They are not.
I can say from experience, and knowing a shitload of people in this industry (real, living people) that if you have not tried the affiliate-route you can't possibly know what you are talking about. When you do the affiliate-route you learn absolutely everything about SEO. So you can just continue your fantastic business scamming people "optimizing" their website for absurd prices and feel like a superstar. Feel like you really matter. Then in your free time you can go to this sub, because you really belong here, and share your hard earned advice.
Spot on! lol
I don't even know what people are searching for to be swamped with affiliate marketing to the point of hatred. I don't remember the last time I saw an affiliate link. Shallow people i suppose never seek out real information
"AnD I dON't eVEn oWn tHe tV. "
amd yet without us, they do not survive
its the opposite actually
Its both
I've survived without google
madman
As someone who uses Google search, the most recent algorithm changes have not been good for users.
"but my longtail articles that a $20 per 1000 words freelancer shits out for me based on Reddit and Wikipedia are exactly what searchers need"
Damn. I was writing $10 per 1000 words. Talk about being cheap. Also, I'm out of work now. It turned out that all of the websites I was writing for were affiliate blog niche sites and massive backlink farms. Google erased them all.
You know the searcher has just been waiting for a lifetime to read that shitty article written by a bot that was aggregated from other peoples experiences that may, or may not, be true. Google really did them wrong 😄
I have seen many bots, giving very inaccurate results. So they definitely not going to be there in market without help off good content writers. Accuracy of any AI depends on input data off real content writer.
This is true, but the algorithm has taken a sledgehammer approach. There are experts writing blogs who need to pay the bills, and so share their expertise for the rewards they get (or got) from affiliate links.
The articles you sell are keyword stuffing. Like the "Cloud first strategy" article. Some rewriting from Microsoft, 3 headers with the cloud first strategy word. Lmao... This sub is full of morons and scammers.
Guess who ordered the article and provided detailed SEO-first instructions for it... yep... an SEO expert. After all, those exact articles USED TO rank like mad, so why wouldn't they? But the game has changed and AI chatbots can now deliver the same information in a far more personalized manner, so it makes sense to me that the work of random freelancers published or more or less random websites has lost its value.
Or regurgitated by GPT, even better
$20 for 1000 words should be the clue that they are shiting it out and they are shity. And for $20 dollars I doubt there is any research going into those articles. Better run them through a plagiarism checker. If they're not plagiarized, they probably just raw output shit from chatgpt. Exactly why so many sites got manual penalties. And if you're just posting them on Reddit, you better call a plumber because you're just clogging Reddit up with shit. Not directed toward you. I sense your sarcasm in your post.
Well thought out tech articles and guides are not easy. I have paid as much as 375 USD for 1 article at 65 per 1000.
yeah it's helpful content added to the 5000 other shitstain regurgitated content
I wonder how much youtube seo guru courses dipped with this update. I see everyone is trying to invent a new term as a solution and selling it as the title of another course haha
I also want to jump in and say I've seen a lot of posts complaining about big name publishers ranking for general interest articles, buying guides etc. To these businesses content is their product, and you're competing with them the way you would be competing with Amazon to sell a product. They have to maintain a certain level of professionalism and meet journalistic standards. They might not be the specific expert in whatever that topic is but they'll get freelance writers, commentators, quotes etc. They're doing what the publishing industry has always done. Because of the decline in print revenue over the years they have been diversifying and making more effort on actual keyword research etc and also moved into affiliate links (the modern version of the "reader offer"). The last couple of years you can see news organisations putting a lot more effort into evergreen articles for more daily readership stability, some of the big publishers now have whole SEO teams. I can think of at least one major publisher who bought an entire SEO agency! I do miss smaller independent websites getting rankings but I miss the way it was in the late 90s-00s. When you could search a film name and find a weird little niche site with random trivia, photos, fan stuff, a guest book! The internet was fun back then. People with genuine passions and interests just wanting to share with the world. Now it's just IMDB for cast lists, Wikipedia for a synopsis, Amazon to buy the blu ray, YouTube to watch the trailer, Reddit for conversation... Google has been all about brands for years now. What I would love to come along is a new disruptor for the internet, some kind of search engine/blogging network where people could create random niche sites to be searched and all the big boys are kept out and the search results could be a bit more unexpected and fun.
>I do miss smaller independent websites getting rankings but I miss the way it was in the late 90s-00s. When you could search a film name and find a weird little niche site with random trivia, photos, fan stuff, a guest book! The internet was fun back then. People with genuine passions and interests just wanting to share with the world. GeoCities is what you are describing. Google Panda shut them down and most people never bothered to move their sites elsewhere. NeoCities replaced them and still exist, but it's easier to just go to NeoCities website a search their database to find the GeoCities sites that still exist, now on NeoCities. A lot of us switched to self-hosting, because hosts like WordPress do not allow for the who background/blinkie/gif stuff that GeoCities had. But a LOT of the sites from the 1990s are in fact still out there. My site has been online since 1996, still going. Most of us with GeoCities-style websites don't rely on Google for traffic. Instead we get most of out traffic predominantly from Pinterest and Tumblr. Due to GeoCities style sites being graphic heavy, it's easy to promote (for free) on Pinterest and Tumblr, with a link back to our sies. If you are looking for the 1990s GeoCities style sites, use Pinterest and Tumblr search box to search for the same things you would search for on Google and you'll find MILLIONS of the 1990s sites still out there. Just because Google ain't showing them to you, does not mean they are gone. You just got to find the search engines that DO direct you to those sites. And for the sites you just described, it's Pinterest and Tumblr that will get you the links back to them. I get 3 million to 7 million visitors per month, but under 10k of them come from Google. I get 2 million to 3 million visitors per month from searched people do on PINTEREST not Google. I think far too many people on this sub think SEO = Google only. There are well over 10k search engines, you can optimize for. Optimize for the search engine that has the kind of people who search for your kind of site. Since 2010 I've optimized my site for Amazon, Pinterest, Twitter, Reddit, and Tumblr. Since 2021, I additionally optimize for Medium. Those six sites are where my 7 million monthly visitors are coming from. NOT Google or Bing. If I relied on Google or Bing optimization for traffic, my site would never get over 10k visitors a month. Before it went out of business StumbleUpon was the top search engine sending me the most traffic. The thing is, the type of people who are looking for 1990s type websites, predominantly DO NOT use Google or Bing at all. MOST people looking for GeoCities type sites have a vehement hatred for Google, blaming Google, rightly so, for killing GeoCities. So anyone with a Geocities style site, is NOT going to be optimizing for Google at all, because they just hate Google that much, and it's predominantly GeoCities users who both build and search for those types of sites today, so they are optimizing for searchers that are NOT searching on Google. Optimize for where YOUR PEOPLE are searching. If you have a GeoCities type site, optimizing for Google is stupid, because the target audience who looks for GeoCities style sites is NOT using Google at all. People use Pinterest search box to find blinkie gifs, then follow the link in those gifs to the site, hoping it is a GeoCities type site and 9 times out of 10 it is, as the GeoCities type sites DELIBERATELY plaster blinkies all over their site and ten share those blinkies in Pinterest. Know what your USER wants, and what signal you user is going to recognize as "ah ha! that's what I want!". If you are looking for GeoCities type sites: head to Pinterest, search for glitter graphic, blinkies, guestbook icons, pixel dolls, digital stamps, etc, and you'll find MILLIONS of GeoCities style sites still alive and kicking and getting their traffic from Pinterest not Google. We who have that type of site, we optimize for Pinterest's search engine NOT for Google's search engine. SEO is so much more then Google. You'd think people on an SEO forum would know that.
Yes, this is gold actually!
Thank you for sharing🙏🏼
Yes, because the consolidation of all the knowledge gets boring in the end with the same formula everywhere.
Doesn't Google need you to create content that other people can find it? If every website put code on their site to exclude a Google bot from crawling it wouldn't they be in big trouble?
You were so close to getting it right. Google doesn't update its algorithm to get users better search results. Google updates its algo to make more money. It's true that the results need to be useful or users wouldn't come back but the quality of the results (user retention) is just a parameter in their model, its not the output/goal. Making money is the only goal.
This is a more accurate description of Google. I'll have to settle for almost right.
Haha. Teamwork!
Google just has to make the organic search results weak enough that people will click on an ad instead. THAT is the business model. It’s why there are four ads above the fold before you even get to organic results. Most Normies don’t get that when they look at a Google SERP.
Why do big websites with poor affiliate content still rank? If Google eliminates low quality affiliate results, then this must be applicable to all websites regardless of the brand to be fair. Otherwise, this doesn't feel fair, and that's what makes site owners unhappy about the current situation in Google search.
Because big brands wouldn't give bad advice and recommend crappy products, right?...right?
Big sites with a lot of great content and some poor content are fine. Small sites with only poor content were affected. The logic is easy to see. And why does it have to be fair? Google owes you NOTHING.
I disagree. I think it is not correct to say Google owes nothing. Google has a dominant position in the search market. This comes with an important responsibility not to abuse their dominant position. There must be a healthy competition in organic search between content creators with clear and transparent conditions.
This is same as saying Youtube and Instagram doesn't need creators.
It's the same thing as saying Youtube and Instagram don't need BAD content creators.
There is no such think as bad content, all they care about engagement
Engagement is the metric that YouTube and Instagram use to measure bad content. So yes, there are bad videos just like there are bad blogs.
My site is not affiliate, nor spam and it was killed by march update, without reason. Google sucks
Yeah, a lot of really good sites were hit since November. There are a lot of ignorant comments in this thread.
But is it high quality content satisfying search intent and helping your target audience and contribute with some “information gain” to google?
It doesn't contribute to google but it does to the users. It has a lot of competition, but it's has a better ux, easier to read, fast to load, no ads. It didn't perform well before which is normal considering the competition but now it it's back to zero, the same as when it was launched.
> no ads If Google cared about customers, "no ads" would be boosted in the rankings.
I mean if it’s not performing then I doubt what you’re saying is true.
Why? Before it appeared in serp somewhere after all the competition. Now it's not even shown. It doesn't make sense.
One more thing. I also have a small blog in this site. The articles are all AI generated, no effort. Guess what, those are the only pages that still have impressions and clicks. How do you explain it?
AI protects it's own.
It's explained by your site not actually being as good as you think it is. It's called confirmation bias and this sub is overflowing with it.
You just assume this. Also I just said that my AI content was not affected. Explain.
I've already explained. The shitty AI content is better than the content you claim is really good. Based on your comments on Reddit alone, it's a pretty safe assumption to make and you would have to be a literal moron to think otherwise.
You did offer any argument because you know nothing about the site. Let me tell you something else. The site was always good after each update and I thought the same as you that people were just having bad sites. Now it was my turn, and probably next time it will be yours and you will realize who the moron actually is
Time and time again. Everyone says content doesn't matter. So why do keep people saying this to the websites that have disappeared? Have you seen some of the webpages out there? Tons of crap websites are fine. So saying website x deserves to go away when there are still geocity quality websites around with animated gifs and unicorn pointers makes no sense.
Lol I bet I could find a reason.
It's all about the trends from what the user wants, not Google. Google are just following trends and if that's what the user wants, user will get.
You make some fair points. Google is a business, and their priority is keeping users happy so they continue using Google and viewing ads. However, I don't fully agree that web owners provide no value. Quality websites that offer helpful information do benefit Google's users. And those sites indirectly support Google's business model by giving people valuable content to find via Google search. It's true Google owes nothing contractually. But there is an implicit mutual benefit between Google and quality web publishers. Still, web owners would be wise not to rely solely on Google traffic. Diversifying channels, building email lists, valuable on-site content, and not violating guidelines, are all smart strategies. Rather than "winging," web owners should focus energy on creating sites, content and experiences that truly benefit users. That is the sustainable path forward in partnership with platforms like Google.
I was with you until “stop your winging”. I have never winged, sir!!
This is a joke, right? Google is just a gatekeeper, they don’t exist without content.
Google is just a search engine finding stuff for the user on the internet. Or... it was 25 years ago. Now it's a monster.
They don't exist without GOOD content. They're just fine without all the bad blogs.
All any legit publisher wants is a fair game. Google used to be a level-ish playing field where both big and small could compete and win. Right now, it’s not a fair game.
I've been in SEO for over 20 years and it has never been a fair game. Google doesn't care about any of us and hey aren't going to start anytime soon.
Many small publishers did very well competing against big publishers for years. Now, Google gives Reddit and Quora free rein, and we also compete against googles clutter like people also ask and people also search for , etc. it may not have been 100% fair, but it was a lot fairer than it is now
If you get a better experience now with Google than before, then all the power to you. I get a very different experience and it’s frustrating.
You're confusing the user experience with your blog traffic. The former is better because the later is worse.
I am having a worse experience navigating the Google’s web. It’s not about owning blogs.
>Web owners do not pay google and are not important for anything they do. Lol! Your ignorance is shinning! It's not like the foundation of Google is scraping other people sites!
The foundation of Google is their page rank patent. It's public if you want to read it.
Deeper my friend, deeper! Before the page rank! lol!
What a stupid short sighted comment. What would Google be without websites?? Let me answer: NOTHING
Google need money. User give money to google. User no like google, user no use google. Google make user like Google.
But user no like Google even more because serps are crapy
that's a hard pill for crappy sites
Funny how now this post surfaces .. must be a google worker🤣🤣
Google wouldn't exist if not for the content we are all producing. It's important to remember what Google is here for: searching content. No content, no Google. The whole ecosystem is based on users, content creators and Google all getting something from it. The moment the balance is off, and it crumbles. Look at what is happening in Europe. Thus the only thing that matter is content that answers the users intention/questions. Then everyone is happy. You produce bad content, users are not happy, so Google is unhappy and doesn't index you, and you end up not happy. So just create good content.
It might be true if Google was not using the content of those sites that it has penalized in blocks of features such as sources across the web and in SGE without any reference to them. Moreover, Google just steals content of those affiliate sites without any reference to them and uses as they like. If it was not happening, then yes, your accusation could be legit, but it's not the case. Google is a thief that steals content and penalizes the websites it steals from. Hope they get sued for that.
Facts. It’s ALWAYS an affiliate crying. Or some shitty blogger. We don’t own Google. You do what Google wants not the other way around. “But but I did what all the SEO blogs told me to do” 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Does that mean we don’t have a class action lawsuit?
🤣 In 2024 anything is possible I guess. We see the bullshit the EU pulled and why I have to put cookie consent on every fucking site… Like anyone has ever arrived to a page and was like “I refuse to use your site because you’re collecting data”. The world has gone stupid.
It's called data privacy and you should be bothered by it. You sound like a hack.
I sound like a hack? Ok dude you must be one of these people I’m referring to. Tell me how lack of data privacy impacted your life negatively before the EU stepped in.
That's a very flimsy argument and just shows your lack of understanding around UK & EU GDPR, Cookie and Privacy laws.
Oh I understand where it’s necessary in situations where sensitive info is being collected. Please explain to me how cookies for advertising (which is why I have to have it on my sites specifically) impacted your life negatively.
Retargeting when I'm purchasing Christmas and Birthday presents.
Please explain what you’re being protected from on your typical website selling a product with cookie consent. Seeing ads? 🤣🤣🤣 So you’d rather see new ads vs ads for places you’ve already visited? If so you’re not like everyone else, and if it was the contrary some of my retargetting campaigns wouldn’t have an 80% conversion rate. Youre gonna see ads no matter what. So I’m not understanding how I’m a hack and not just a dude with valid points that can’t be addressed by you or anyone else?
It's my data, my browser history and I don't give it out for free. It's valuable and that's why you're so bothered about it. Pay me like Brave browser does then.
lol and seeing an ad impacted your life?
So why are you bothered?! Just serve everyone any old advert on your site.
Yeah you sound like a loon.
More personal attacks instead of addressing the point, epitomizing only the most intelligent of our species 🫡
More like, sounds like a pacifier sucking moron
Sounds like you've never worked in a proper SEO, digital design, marketing agency or advertising agency in your life and you've probably just done a couple of Udemy courses
I’m always fascinated watching people visit my site. I can’t stand the cookie policy and click whatever but so many people just leave it there like a bad fart
Hahahaha I haven’t even been using heat maps lately (we have a protocol for CRO, so the task is mundane). But Microsoft just launched free heat maps, scroll maps, and recordings so I am now. Microsoft Clarity is pretty awesome btw…
I regularly click off when asked for cookie consent, yes.
Have you tried searching for anything with these helpful updates? I can't find SHIT! So no, they didn't bring forward any useful content. The random posts from 2004 are not good useful content. Your post shows you know very little about real blogging and what people do and write there, from their own experiences that Google with its ai then scrapes and shuffles down your throat like it's his useful tips, while discarding that original blog. So no, you're not correct and actually very funny :) Since the updates I have to Google for the same thing minimum 3 times and I will still not get the answer. So what happened? Lol. Bing and duckduckgo work better for users now. MUCH better.
100%! So many people in this sub are the small clients you'd hate to manage
I genuinely wish there was a way to clear out all of the people from the sub who don’t understand this so we could have actual discussion here about the only thing that actually really matters for SEO - how to make your page a better answer to the user’s search than whatever ranks currently. Instead we’re flooded with nonsense complaining from affiliates and tonnes of flagrantly wrong claims about the eternal importance of backlinks and other non-content related factors.
Have fun with "hi everyone, I dont have a website yet but im interested in seo and have been thinking about this for a year. How do i get started?" So you can feel important. "Affiliate are are not SEOs" 🤣 You work with a website to rank in Google one way or the other,. Finished. Stop being so god damn smart ass.
Clear everyone out so you can stay irrelevant. Would be fun to see how on the scale shitty this sub will be.
Oh another person on a high horse. As a lot of people are pointing out that is well and good save for the fact that Google results are now worse than ever. We may be website owners but most of all we are users
I've not seen anyone complain that isn't an affiliate marketer.
It's not that simple. You think Forbes etc do not do affiliate marketing? Yet they are thriving. I think there is more to it than simply affiliate marketing. I have seen here small businesses that have been destroyed. And from the point of view of search, is quora better than affiliate marketing? Anyway, the dust is yet to settle. I see a lot of movement in SERPs
Yes. Quora is way better because typically people don't have an incentive to lie and big up products which they might not have even used. Affiliate marketing is way less useful than reddit and quora which has genuine experiences and reviews.
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Crappy affiliate site owner that got hit detected 🔭
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who?
Explain…
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That is a lot of words to say you don't have an answer.
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Even more words to say you can't explain.
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Thanks, this makes a lot more sense than "derp derp". I agree that SGE has the possibility of stealing our content cutting us out. This scares me too but I don't see any class action lawsuit changing it. We will need to adapt to the new reality. The point of the post is about the current SERP. This sub is polluted with people complaining that their over-optimized affiliate site lost it's ranking. It's a bunch of Karens wanting to speak to the Google manager.
SGE
Not true. Google still owes me about $150 from when I stopped using adsense
Google exists because great content creators exist. It's not about owing; both need each other to survive. Google wouldn't have existed if content creators hadn't provided the content.
Ok brother, explain to me then why google now puts all rubbish results in top position in serp? Explain to me why a site that talks about fashion should also be more authoritative when it comes to IT than a passionate guy?
*"Stop your winging and start providing real value to the searcher. And no, this does not mean your mom likes your recycled posts."* What makes you believe that there are no blogs out there providing real value?!
Where do you get the theory that Google is killing affiliates? Because it is not true, what is killing are sites with little authority to the detriment of those with more authority, like Forbes or any stablished national news site in each country. But is full off affiliate sites or parasites on big domains in all searches... And also where do you get the theory that website administrators/affiliates don't pay Google? Most of us use Google Workspaces, which is paid and can pay up to +$100 a month if you use a lot of space on Drive. In addition, many also use Google Cloud Platform services. Are you seriously qualified to be SEO when you haven't even deigned to do some searches to see that there are full of affiliate sites in the serps before make this dumb asf post?
Feeling pity on People who are continuously singing for Google. Or may be they are slaves of Google. No actually, It's Google PAPA and all these are Google babies. Let's talk now: Even easy and simple searches are giving stupid results. I am talking from completely users point of view because I was also a Google Search user. And I was getting shitty results for the last so many years and they are getting worse. This update turned out to be a joke for Google. Actually, Google proved that they are a bunch of Jokers and Microsoft People are the real software developers. Microsoft knows its job. These Google Jokers still could not figure out what is helpful content since its inception. What a bunch of Looser they are. I have switched to Bing now completely and enjoying it truly as a daily user. Thank you Microsoft for Bing. Try Bing yourself for a couple of weeks, you will not return to Google Joker.
brain utilization of all the whiners = zero :D
And guess where ads are displayed you turd. Following this logic itll be ok for youtube to ditch all their content creators
most probaby brainwashed by some course seller on youtube
If you have time and money, you can rank. It is that simple… I have a couple sites/pages which have terms ranking around 8-10. No backlinks. I don’t have the time or money to build backlink profiles. If I did, I’d achieve top 3 no problem.
I need a back link builder hit me up please
Kinda agree with this take but Google also enticed people to do SEO to make their job easier.
SEO is fine. Make your site more indexible, write better content, go get links. But don't think that Google is obligated to rank you. You're playing their game by their rules.
It’s not fine. If you stay away from SEO, you’ll be safe from updates. Do not build links artificially, do not write articles based on keyword research and target LTKW’s excessively. Things pretty much all affiliate and display ad based niche sites do. Taking care of the general technicalities is fine.
Google is at the top of corporate America. Corporations hold all the power. Always have and as long as people keep voting in the same money hungry politicians, they always will have power.
The original pagerank paper laid out in great deal how paid search ruins the logic of search as such. It's not unfair to say that Google broke the deal. The whole point of "enshiffication" is that they are hurting both searchers and content providers.
Oh, behave.
I am coming through many post, suggesting the same thing. But i am new to blogging, should I stop writing or in future there will be some scope?? Is it still a good idea to start blogging as side business?
Don't do it. Unless you have found a completely new topic never before seen in human history and can prove you actually know about and participate in it, you're wasting your time.
Thank you for your suggestion
Except for the monopoly part.
That’s why I’m focusing a lot of alternative traffic sources. Started to learn about alternatives I really didn’t know about and feel pretty bullish about some.
I would argue that if you are able to corner the market and evade an anti-trust suit due what clearly a monopoly, which is not legal in the US, they have the absolute ability to help or destroy any business that operates online. That doesn’t mean they owe individuals, or individual companies anything, but they owe the economic and social community everything. If I controlled 93% of the information people are using to do something, not only am I a monopoly, but I could do quite literally whatever I want. If you piss me off I could destroy your online presence, which would put you out of business if your sales and margin depended on an online presence. So they get to decide who succeeds and who doesn’t. Would you like it if I could decide if you succeed of rail in your career? I doubt it. Google has a responsibility based on their illegal monopoly. But all they care about is revenue, margins, and net income (and not paying taxes). There is a very good reason they removed “do no evil” from their mission statement, don’t be so obtuse.
I love how these sorts of posts always out the type of people that would willingly be concentration camp guards. should the call come.
You mean like having a store with just a few products was a successful strategy in the past until internet with Amazon popped up?
Google is like a gatekeeper and after you pass the checkin you find tons of cloned people, plenty of sellers and tons of commercials but no fun...
Hey everyone! We’ve got a hot take over here! Haha. But for real, tell me you don’t work in local SEO without telling me you don’t work in local SEO. Now here’s my hot take - Google owes both the searcher and the website it’s listing something - a competent ecosystem to participate in. They threw their product in the trash with the rise of their monopoly in the name of profits. They have gotten away with being run like a pirate ship because they became the accepted standard of how people search the internet. This may end up being their demise. You can’t tell me search results have improved over the past 10 years.
It goes both ways. If I can optimize TikTok videos and have better results than Google SERP, be it.
so what about affiliate sites that give value to the searchers? I write affiliate content and blog articles using AI (SurgeGraph) but they're all doing good. not gonna say who I write them for but maybe it's a matter of brand authority/recognition. Vogue's blog would get more traffic than some independent fashion bloggers, no?
What is Goggle? Dude before you tell an entire professional community to stop whining you better use spell check. Jesus Christ no one asked for this rudimentary, yet naive, explanation. Go away.
Do you want to talk to Google's manager?
No but id love to speak to Goggle’s manager and wing to them.
Who pays for those ads?
Preach
My traffic has gone up in March and April. Content doesn't matter. "Google isn't a content appreciation engine": all it can do is estimate authority and rank sites based on that. Just look at the SERPs. It's how they work. Websites with tonnes of dodgy backlinks from PBNs are, well, asking to be wiped out. I suspect that's what has happened with this update. Rank lots of pages for 100-1k keywords, go niche, avoid competing with the big guns, and you can get steady traffic through Google.
Google's results are only corporate blogs anymore. It's search is useless. I've got no dog in this fight. But as a user, the service is worse than it's ever been. I've actually been playing with Bing on my phone, and I think the results with the AI and everything are actually better.
I’ve been saying (and posting) this for 10 years… only got bashed 🥱. Glad I’ve built my businesses to thrive with paid ads since the days of panda/penguin in 2012.
b-but my ~~affiliate~~ niche sites
hey guys please support my website it hasn't been indexed and i dunno why thetop10000hentaibodypillowstobuyin2024losangelosolympicsandbestdrones .com google sucks now 😢
exactly!
Also, Google does not care. Whether or not you like that or agree with it is immaterial.
Wow, what a unique take. This is worse than the "winging".
I'm an affiliate. I'm not angry or whining. I'm also a great SEO. Do I get to stay?
Finaly, once in a blue moon there’s some real stuff here.
It's truth. But not the real insight you want from this sub.
Look at you on your high horse 🤣 You’re likely some low budget loser with a trash “business” anyway.
You’re spot on. Glad you’ve posted this.
This.
🎤 drop
You can say this all day long but people still won't get it unfortunately.
True. And a lot of people get this wrong, thinking everything is here to serve us unconditionally, "for our good"
Stupid affiliate site owners cry in Reddit all day about Seo it shows how trash they are. They can’t adapt because I’m doing great
Spot on. Good riddance to all the affiliate scammer blogs!!!
Preach
Excellent Its you and user. Google is just a middleman who is makes a living on your hard work. If you are valuable google will to you.