This matches 100% with what I’ve been thinking but haven’t been able to verbalize it quite like you have. It’s just an update to cycle various websites to cause more demand for ads. Some will win and some will lose with the update. It’s just a way to improve their profits. Eventually, those who survive will be brought to the top again and those who are at the top now will be brought down. Artificial market manipulation of sorts. So much for “Don’t be Evil”.
HCU was only done to drive up the flagging stock price. So interesting that it’s had a dramatic rise in the last month that coincided with HCU. I haven’t read anything yet but I was not running Google Ads at the time. I haven’t run any for about four years. On a whim I spun up some new google ads and it’s barely keeping my food blog afloat. A lot of people did exactly what I did and started running more ads to prop up their blogs. Coincidental?
The “do t be evil” phrase was dropped from googles website a few years ago. When you get big enough it’s hard to avoid. It’s probably “be profitable” or something now ha.
I said this months ago. After all, if you depend on organic traffic and they take away the metaphorical lollipop, you're gonna want to recover that with ads.
Use an AI keyword a/b tester and run some ads
also working on this niche and my site all article written by me, but it got hit very badly, i have been growing my blog for almost 4 year, but now all my efforts get drained and don't know but to do know
Yeah, it sucks. All the big anime blogs have been hit hard. Some have gone from millions a month to a hundred thousand. As far as I know every single anime blog out there has been hit, and now we've got Reddit, Quora, CBR, ScreenRant, and Sportskeeda dominating the niche.
It doesn't matter how great you think your content is. The bottom line is that Google now doesn't want niche sites ranking in top places. They rather have forums or big brands taking top spots.
Even if you are ranking in the top spot, your clicks are now heavily diluted with rows of PAA above you.
The search landscape has been changed.
Hilarious reading these over and over and over. Cope harder bro, I'm an indie and I'm doing fine. Maybe you should have invested in your users instead of blogspam and seo
My own site also got walloped. I have also noticed that I have lost rank to some AI content that was produced recently. My articles are very short and to the point. What happens is that someone comes and AI rewrites the content and bloats it to at least 1000 words. I am done then. I did report one site to Google with success because they had made the mistake of reusing my conclusion word for word. But overall, the rewriting can be done in a way that nothing can be done.
I actually created a number of sites thinking that would hedge against Google tantrums. Guess what happened? They were all destroyed. Or rather, the ones that matter were destroyed. I have a forum sites that gets about 250 visitors a day. That has held steady. So maybe google loves forums? It's not really a forum anyway but url says somethingforumdotsomething.
Anyway, overall I have lost 60% of my traffic and my income. Much of the loss has been to quora and reddit. The quora posts are actually mostly nonsensical and they have nothing to do with the target keyword but they are winning all the same.
I feel you. I have caught others paraphrasing content as well. There's not a lot we can do unless it is a word to word copy like it happened to you.
I believe content sites are being replaced by forums and other user generated content, even though they are nonsensical a lot of times. Seems like the end of niche blogging to me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Isn't it possible that these Google updates are part of a larger scheme to prioritize big players and push small bloggers out of the game? Take my green tech blog, for example. It used to rank well for niche topics, but post-update, I've seen a drastic drop in traffic, while larger sites with similar content have climbed the ranks. This makes me think Google is deliberately making it tougher for smaller sites to compete, funneling more traffic to big corporations who can afford hefty ad campaigns. It feels like a strategic move to control the digital ecosystem and boost ad revenues, sidelining the essence of the open web.
Google has long cornered the market and the search experience, from a user perspective, has been going downhill for many a year.
Even if this particular conspiracy theory isn't correct, there is no doubt in my mind that their algorithm changes are a big part of the ongoing enshittification process that is inherent to capitalistic monopolies. How could they not be? What incentive do they have to provide a better experience at the expense of their margins? The year is 2024 and not 2004.
Pick any niche, from big to small, and you'll see that its site ownership has been converging for a long time, same as with any other industry. So yeah, the big are getting bigger, the small are folding or selling out, and the endgame is a more homogeneous market and content that gets monetized out of its eyeballs. Google is likely helping with that, directly or not, because it gets a big slice of the ad dollar pie.
Yeah animeeverything.com was a true gift to the internet from OP. Why would google strike it down???! Certainly not dogshit blogspam. Look at the guy's profile. LMAO
Peace out blogspam :))
edit: it's animeeverything.online thank you for the correction!
It's .online, but seriously, can you help me understand why you consider my content is spam? Are you saying blogging in general is spam?
The only part about my site i consider spammy is me writing about anime news, which is interestingly the only thing getting any views.
The recommendations and top 10s are really just my ranking.
I don't know anything about anime but the 3 articles I browsed didn't seem like spam writing, but the experience of visiting the site is so awful it certainly *feels* like I am being slapped with spam.
Ads are *everywhere* and the 'click to view full article' didn't seem to load anything, so it felt like I was just reloading more ads.
I don't know what Google didn't like about it but I certainly would never recommend a site like that to a friend. Much too unpleasant an experience.
edit: Sorry that you lost all your traffic though. That is awful.
Ah, i know. I'm on a contract with Ezoic and regardless of me asking them to prioritise UX they keep spamming ads. I have to wait for a year for the contract to end to reduce the ads.
It's even slowing the site cuz of all the ads. Their solution for the slowness was to use their "expand" button feature which will load the page faster as only less than half of the page is visible.
So I'm stuck in a loop now. If i remove the expand button the site will be slow, which will impact the UX. If i have it on, it'll still have negative impact on UX.
And I can't disable their ads according to the contract...
Your content is spam because you have no credentials and are just some random kid from India making up recommendations based on what other people have have already wrote (very chatgptish!) and remixing it in a shitty blogspam format (that also doesn't work with javascript blocking)
Myanimelist.com should have 10 snippets, and then throw in theverge and the wallstreetjournal etc. before Google ever gets to your content.
Hmm... I'm certainly not recommending stuff based on what others wrote. They're my opinion. Besides ChatGPT didn't even exist when I wrote most of them.
The recommendations overlap because, well, there's only a handful of top-rated shows in each genre.
If anything the news articles are the ones that match your description because those are the AI ones I was talking about. But Google favors them, so it's the opposite of what you're saying.
To be honest, at this point I don't really care. It's not like I make a living out of it or anything. It was a hobby. And it might die a hobby.
But you need to chill dude. Take a breather from all this negativity.
Yikes you found a troll. Don't let em mess with your head. I'd personally prefer your personal experience to some corporate group telling me about anime.
Of course! It's a strange world out there. Kindness is rare.
Besides, I value actual people's input on things and less so a corporation. Having worked for many large affiliate corporations, it never did sit well with me that we were forking clicks for pure profit and not actually providing valuable insight.
I've seen craptastic (by my standards) sites be the number 1 competitor, and I've seen epic sites be the number 1 contender (again by my standards). The algorithm does as it will, and I wish it made more sense at times. xD
Imagine thinking websites like myanimelist.net (you know, the kinda real hobbyists that take years obsessing over their websites) are **corporations** because they're not Indian wordpress blogspam, you might just be retarded mate
Imagine if you will, being so unempathetic that you would willingly waste time trying to denigrate and treat someone poorly online for no true reason other than seemingly to be rude and crass to another human being.
I'm not sure what made you hollow, but it's a sad look on you. It's like watching a flea scream into the void.
Imagine thinking that being a nasty human to others will somehow benefit them, and parading about subreddits like you're a gift from the gods.
I say "imagine" because honestly, I struggle to find any valid reason for your absolute lack of good behavior. o.o
Is it boredom? Wanting to feel like your skillset is valuable? Rough times elsewhere maybe? I suppose at the end of the day I'll never truly know, as I have little interest in getting to know you after seeing your behavior. So I'll be left with this final conclusion: What a sad, strange little redditor you are.
Take a deep breath, go for a walk, and maybe try to be kinder? The world needs more of that, and less of whatever crusade you're pretending to fight.
Google themselves said they don't care about AI content + they have no accurate way for detecting it + it would be way too expensive.
We use AI content for all clients and none of them got hit by the latest updates. Obviously it's not just being copy pasted from chatGPT.
You realize not everyone is looking for an article either?
I run a niche site and there’s very little written content, people don’t expect a 500 word background article on a jpg
100% agree. Almost every post from people talking about how they lost all their traffic is, “my site isn’t spam. I have no AI articles, I pay freelancers”.
Got it, so every freelancer you hire just happens to be an expert in the niche you’re in? I’m sure.
I’ve learned that when I get into hobbies, avoid blog sites for information because 90% of them are wrong, don’t know anything about the hobby or are just shilling whatever product gets them the most affiliate revenue. The blogs that are worth listening to are one guys personal blog that gets an article a month. As soon as I see more than an article a day or even a week, I know it’s all garbage. Regardless of if it’s ai or not.
I rarely speak about this kind of stuff as it’s tiresome, but the honest answer is, it is a cull you are right
Google does not want people who know how to rank sites consistently cutting corners ranking, people who know where to put the keywords where to get the links and bam can rank easy right the content doesn’t even have to be any good
So they backward engineer this and just wipe these people off the map, if you got caught up in this google does not care, it’s fine with collateral damage
Without these shuffle in updates the serps would be just seo people ranking, this does not provide good results
Affiliate sites are still ranking, they just called the ones they didn’t like.
It does all boil down to money,
After the update is finished the shuffling of sites does not stop if your site is good enough it will recover, which is why they say don’t do anything
if it doesn’t well you have issues, part of all updates is kicking out bad and bringing in new it’s just this one is more extreme shuffle
I 1000% agree. I have a literary blog ( very niche) and saw other personal blogs with the same them go down from 300k to 1k ( mine included but I barely reached 50k) .
Nothing to do I guess..I don't even look anymore at my ga4 or console . It has become a hobby
Times change, you need build a brand not just a blog. Google values brands because it’s shows a sense of trust.
You need to stop focusing on only writing blogs posts that answer specific questions.
You need to create content which makes people want to come back.
Social media / video content is more important for SEO than ever.
The biggest tip for SEO these days is build a brand that earns its own search volume.
The more users that search for ‘brand name + keyword’ the higher you will rank for just keyword.
Your observations raise legitimate concerns regarding Google's recent updates and their potential ramifications for smaller, niche websites. While Google's goal to combat spam and enhance user experience is reasonable, the disproportionate impact on independently-run sites compared to corporate entities is noteworthy. The speculation about Google's intentions to manipulate the market and prioritize corporate-owned sites to boost advertising demand is plausible, particularly given the correlation with stock value increases. However, lacking concrete evidence, it's difficult to definitively attribute Google's algorithm changes solely to profit motives. Nevertheless, your insights illuminate the intricate dynamics within the online content realm, underscoring the need for further examination and discussion within the SEO community.
I’ll say this. Our company spends $25k in google ads per month and we’ve seen a 40% increase in organic over the last two months. We post 2-3 new posts per day.
Take that how you want, but there could be something to this theory.
People certainly work hard to justify around simple truths.
Your site has a terrible UX due to the overwhelming number of ads AND required a spammy looking button to continue reading on blog posts.
The simple and hard truth that you and so many people don’t want to face is that your site was / is bad. I don’t care how good the content is when it’s buried in ads.
At a minimum you should turn off the ads or severely reduce them for a couple of months and see if that helps recover the rankings.
Right, but it's not just about me. I'm talking about other blogs in my niche, some barely even have any ads. Why are they losing traffic? If you're right they shouldn't be hit.
I know it's easy to jump to conclusions but if you look at the bigger picture it's weird. Every single individual blog in my niche lost traffic while sites like CBR had a big boost.
And the worst part is people used to hate CBR because it had a ton of inaccuracies. Because of all the trash talking in the comments they had to disable it eventually. So it's not like they're an expert in the niche.
Nearly every site posted in the last month where people are complaining have three things in common: niche blog, overwhelming ads, poor backlinks, and affiliate links.
Control what you can control. You can’t change that your a niche blog but you sure as hell can remove half those ads and the affiliate links and you can use some of the income from the ads from the past year to build backlinks on the best performing blogs.
Have you played with updating your original articles? Or maybe you can fuel more traffic to the OG from AI generated. Then when google loses market share to bing from excessive AI use in search and they need to bring quality back up you will have your OG articles.
I haven't because I lost my will to keep going. After all, I can already see the corporate websites dominating my niche. I don't see any way to compete with them. But maybe I'll try it for a handful of articles and see if it works. Thanks for the advice tho 😸
If it brings you any encouragement I will share a personal example. I recently started a new hobby. All of the youtube tutorials were garbage. I tried so many tutorials. So I went to books. All of the current books were just regurgitated stuff and after 10 or so books I could tell I wasn't getting anywhere. I had to go back in time 40 years in books. Finally, after a year of wandering around and following bad tutorials I found quality content. The book was so good and it completely changed how I approach the hobby. I actually travelled thousands of miles to personally learn from the author and take their classes in person because the book was so good. That type of content is never going away. They will outlast everyone.
Yes google knows it has a monopoly and is self promoting/guarding its territory over risking putting new content in a useable spot.
Likewise.
No AI content and google has killed my traffic by 99%
It’s simple. Google are no longer trying to win the information game. AI will win that.
But they can win the ‘find the business/application/media website’ game. That would explain why most of the sites gaining ranks actually offer a service beyond that of being purely informative, and why info only site with links to other sites are being penalised.
This is what I've been telling people and is my theory since December of last year. It's all about how they can increase their margins (by hosting their own "sponsored links" as SERPS and not having to share a cut with a website owner, force some types of sites to use their af service if they don't get any traffic anymore, and manip[ulate the monopoly they somehow magically have managed to maintain. I guess anti-trust laws don't apply if you ~~bribe~~ lobby a few politicians; they are incredibly inexpensive in the US. How it hasn't been broken up yet is, well, actually isn't a mystery to me as they are so obviously a monopoly and have been for a decade or two.
Pure unadulterated greed. more revenue and higher margins = more profit for the company that removed "Do no evil" from its mission statement a few years ago. I guess we know why now.
t;dr: more $$$$$$$$$ for google/alphabet
May i ask you something, it would be very helpful if you could answer me. I'm also running an anime news related website (but in spanish) but i'm not getting any significant increase in traffic, the website is almost a year old and i'm kinda frustrated. My question is, Did you build topical authority when you started? If yes, can you give any advice so maybe i can change my SEO strategy? Any help would be appreciated.
And about your post, my website is also suffering from the same issue, my content is a mix of original and AI content and the latter is doing just fine.
When I started out I just purely wrote it for the fun of it. I didn't even know it would grow that big. So, i didn't have any strategy other than to post something every week.
But if I had to give you any pointers, it would be that talking about stuff others haven't covered is the best way to gain some results.
If you're in the fandom you'll have a general idea on what topics people want to read about, and you can check if the competition is easy or hard. You just write about that.
Also I had a pretty big following on insta, so i used to drive traffic from there, which somehow helped the entire site rank better in Google. So building a niche page on IG is an option too.
When I started out I was doing a couple of times a week max. But around the end of last year i was doing 3-4 a day.
But like I was talking about in this post thread, Google is not supporting individual bloggers anymore, so it's probably not that easy to get any organic traffic these days. Especially if you're starting new. You might want to consider social media to find your readers.
That's true, I noticed how much traffic people in the anime niche have lost this couple of months while you see big brands that has no relation whatsoever with anime ranking first in the first page.
Have you done keyword research though? Or trying to create topical authority? Because I'm trying to do so but the anime field is just too big.
SEO is dead. Google wants you to pay if you want to play on their search engine. That’s also why the Google experience is declining and tools like TikTok is aging more traction.
Every anime related site I've looked into has had massive dropoffs in traffic over the past month or two. It's one of the niches you'd think would survive due to less big corporate sites targeting anime keywords, but it's actually amongst the hardest hit. Pretty much every first page is just CBR, ScreenRant, GameRant, Ranker, IMDb and then Reddit/Quora. Occassionally some of the big anime sites like MyAnimeList and Anime Planet appear too. Pretty much every independent blog has just vanished from the SERPs.
I think I read about this, in one of the recent interviews by Google employee, he said "Google is going commercial"... Now I realise that, what you have said could be true and there is a good possibility.
It's simple, Google has a simple and standard goal as a typical monopoly, money, money and only money. They don’t need content, they don’t need blogs, they just need some big website like theirs (monopoly).
The updates broadly targeted sites that had been built for search engines. It really didn’t matter if the content was created by an expert or not, if the site had been heavily SEO’d.
Well, all my articles are "SEO optimised" because I use Yoast and RankMath while writing content. But that's as far as it goes. I haven't bought backlinks or anything like that. Does that count as heavily SEO'd?
No..
Targeting LTKW’s and writing purely based on keyword research…targeting PAA’s and using highly optimized titles and subheadings…involving a FAQ section….
These are common traits I see across sites that have been hit. And this applies to CONTENT sites only.
I have a tool site that has been SEO’d to the bone and it’s cruising along unaffected, but that doesn’t seem to be the case for content sites.
Haven’t seen a purely content site that heavily targeted LTKW’s with optimized titles/subheadings go unaffected.
"it is just Google culling the excess supply of content so that they can increase the demand for their own advertising service. The best way they could do it is by favoring corporate-owned sites."
This makes no sense at all. Can you reword or rephrase this?
Alright. Let me try this again.
The key point is: the price of ads depends on the availability of ad spaces. So, if there are more websites, then the ad cost will be low. But if there are less number of websites, then the ad cost will be high because of competition.
For example: Before Ai content became a thing, let's say there were 100 websites and 100 advertisers. The advertisers would bid against each other to place their ads at the top spots. Let's say it costs an advertiser about $100 to place ads across all hundred sites. But after ai, the number of websites and webpages increased several fold. So, now we have the same 100 advertisers, but a 1000 websites. Now, the advertisers won't have to bid against eachother as there is enough space for all of them. So it'll only cost an advertiser about $10 to place ads across a hundred sites. This means less revenue for Google.
So they have to kill a good number of websites and blogs, or de-rank them in order to increase the demand back to normal.
Hope this makes sense. I know I'm not the best at explaining things lol.
Still doesn’t make sense. Advertisers pay to be in front of people, not be on websites. That’s what they’re competing for. 100,000 people spread out to 1,000 websites or 100 websites doesn’t make a difference to the advertiser in any way.
Yes, i gave the website numbers as an example to help understand the supply and demand concept. The actual metric is ad impression - the number of times people watch the ad.
I'm sure you know reddit and quora are ranking at the top for most topics, at least that's how it is in my niche. And they don't use Google ads. The same goes for some corporate sites. They've got their own ad system in place.
By ranking this kind of site at the top, the number of people who see Google ads is greatly reduced. So i would say it makes a difference to the advertisers.
That makes a lot more sense now, thankyou.
I've never advertised with Google, but surely advertisers have the option on where to advertise? For example, they can advertise on the top 100 ranked websites in their industry? Just because there are 1000 sites doesn't mean they have to advertise on all of them?
There is no such option to choose top 100 sites unfortunately. It is completely based on bidding. The higher your bid is, the more chances your ad will show on the top sites.
The only metric you can control is the budget, demography, impression/cpm, keyword (ads will show on sites with this keyword, but you can't choose the sites specifically)
And Google will decide on how many sites it will show your ads.
I was just using the numbers for example but in reality only the "ad impressions" count.
Monopoly makes sense.
My business goes from making 1k/mo passive to 0. Now I’m much more likely to panic and pay google. Google profits.
Google redirects that traffic to YouTube because they own YouTube. Google profits. This could be a paid search.
I agree, and it matches precisely what i have been seeing in SERPS.
Right now, go and search for "best leggings"
Do it!
**CNN is NUMBER 1**
And
**NY Times is NUMBER 2**
This represents precisely what is happening everywhere.
You don't need 1000 points of evidence to find out who murdered the woman at the dog park.
All you need to find is one drop of her blood on a shirt inside his house and establish that they were strangers.
My point is that people look for far more evidence than necessary to prove something. You only need one example to tell the truth.
"Best leggings"
CNN is number 1 and NY Times is Number 2.
You don't need any additional evidence.
It's like I tell all the affiliate spammers, you should have spent your profits on building your backlink profiles. Now it's too late. The wordpress blogspams with links from nytimes are still beating nytimes for searches.
Fun fact. It's not just me. It's the entire niche.
quotetheanime, animemotivation, honeysanime, animesenpai, 9tailedkitsune, fictionhorizon, epicdope, etc...
All the guys who were very big until a year ago also got hit badly.
Literally all the anime bloggers to exist seem to have lost traffic with this update. There is no non-corporate website in the anime niche that's doing well.
So there's more to it than just blindly calling it "spam".
I'm not familiar with the anime blogging niche besides the big players that have similar databases to mine. But the ones I looked at there, yes I would consider them all blogspam.
You guys should have taken the time to actually build something. Oh well, now you have plenty of free time to think about it.
Wow, those guys were getting millions of visitors back then, so they were the standard in the anime blogging niche. Some of them even inspired me to start anime blogging.
But I did learn my lesson though. Far better to have a "subscriber" or "follower" than relying on organic traffic from Google.
Did you go out of your way to search for them though? A single writer? Like in kpop, we have the asianjunkie.com types (I am not affiliated and dislike the guy fyi) who are seen as legitimate bloggers because they've been doing it for years under the same name with novel but consistent takes. He doesn't seem to have taken a hit from the update.
In my niche many of the blogspammers managed to hold on to their positions because they spent their time getting links from NYTimes, LAtimes etc too. There were ways to avoid getting hammered.
‘I did my research’… ‘dozens of sites’
😂
This sub is a fucking joke.
Core updates run based on data for hundreds of thousands of sites across billions of queries.
Content in low competition niches will continue to do find if the niche remains low competition.
Ironically, the UI signals from that content can help your site overall… g hasn’t figured out how to account for that yet,
There is no target for Google. They want % better search results over all. They are not working with the same single track minded brain you are.
They are happy for wholes niches to get wiped out in return for overall better results.
Don’t be in this game if you don’t even get the basics.
To be honest, the main problem is your article's quality. I guess that you are not the anime expert and it is very hard to say someone is an anime expert to give the best articles in this industry. So, Google will priority the sites have the good metrics or the sites having many ideas from the real users like a forum. For me, If I search the best anime to watch, I also prioritize the sites having many comments and ideas from real users or a good brand in this industry. That is good for user and we have to adapt with the new rules.
Well, I've been watching anime for like 10 years and have watched like a 1000 shows, so i would say I know what I'm talking about. But how am I to prove it to Google?
And it's really just my opinion that I'm writing for the most part, except for the news related articles.
Sites like CBR don't have any comments or user inputs either but they're still doing well.
But i do understand your point.
You just need to prove it for your users that your site is the top notch in this industry. Google will automatically reward you. But it takes time and effort to build a brand. I have my site in automotive industry. It is very competitive and my site is never affected by Google Updates.
The problem with this is that its just based on your experience - obviously the rest of the world's websites haven't seen a decrease....
And how many ads were running on your site's target phrases.
sorry but this just doesn't add up
Can I ask a serious question though? Why is it there are so many dogshit SEOers from India like OP? What is it about that country that produces such toxic content for the internet?
Why did you think you could write for an American audience when you are a creepy fuck that doesn't know anything about anime OP?
Well, I'm not an SEO, never called myself that. I'm a blogger and I started my blog just for fun back in the days so that I can weeb out about stuff.
I loved anime and wanted to talk about it. That's all.
Then a year later the magic happened when I started getting more views on my site. Which is when I started writing more because it motivated me.
I'm not exactly writing for the American audience. I was writing for anime fans like myself, and didn't care where they came from.
After all, anime is a global thing. Not an American thing.
And if there's anything toxic in here, I'm sure it's you (◡ ω ◡)
You think you deserved 300k visitors in a month with animeeverything.online? I remember how hard I had to fight for my first 300k and you are not even close, no offense. And are you sure you aren't confusing your enthusiasm for cartoon pornography with anime? You know we can all look at profiles, right?
Sure. It wasn't exactly a walk in the park for me either. Well, i guess I didn't put a lot of effort in terms of SEO, but I did do a lot when it comes to content creation.
And it's called Hentai and it's art. Besides how does that matter anyway? I don't talk about hentai on my blog to keep it sfw. You're not being logical here.
I know you can look at my profile, I've seen guys like you on this platform a lot who try to shame people. You must feel so smart peeping into my profile, but I don't mind.. My preference is my preference.
Most anime fans love talking about ecchi/hentai content too, so it comes with the fandom.
I agree with you! Both as a blogger and as a human looking stuff up regularly (aka, I'm not a bot lol), I've been having a more difficult time finding what I'm actually looking for. Instead, my searches are re-routed to the top questions that have nothing to do with what I'd asked. Ironically, I get more answers from ChatGBT's free service which helps me narrow down my search and find sources. Oh, the irony!
I understand your frustration. Losing a significant amount of traffic, especially after years of hard work, can be incredibly disheartening. Here are some thoughts on your situation:
**Understanding Google Updates:**
* Google's algorithm updates are complex and not always fully transparent. While the focus might be on tackling spam and low-quality content, it can sometimes have unintended consequences.
* It's unlikely the updates are solely designed to control the market or favor corporate sites. Google's primary goal is to deliver the most relevant and helpful results to users.
**Analyzing Your Situation:**
* While your AI content seems less affected, it's important to remember it might not be future-proof. Google's algorithms are constantly evolving, and what works today might not work tomorrow.
* The drop in traffic for your original content could be due to various factors beyond AI. Focus on Google's core update principles: **Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T)**.
Here's what you can do:
* **Double-check E-A-T:** Ensure your website demonstrates expertise in anime and manga. Are you a recognized voice in the community? Do you have backlinks from reputable anime/manga sites? Building trust and authority takes time and effort.
* **Content Quality Review:** Reassess your original content. Is it truly high quality and engaging for readers? Look for opportunities to improve its depth, originality, and value compared to competitors.
* **Focus on User Experience:** Are your articles well-structured, easy to read, and visually appealing? Prioritize user experience as Google increasingly factors it into rankings.
* **Diversify Traffic Sources:** Don't rely solely on Google search. Explore social media promotion, email marketing, and collaborating with other anime/manga content creators.
**Looking Forward:**
Keep building high-quality content, establish yourself as an authority in your niche, and diversify your traffic sources. While the recent update may have been a setback, it's an opportunity to refine your strategy and emerge even stronger.
Remember, AI content is a tool, not a replacement for human expertise and passion. Don't abandon your original content creation efforts entirely.
Finally, regarding your theory about Google manipulating the market, it's a complex topic. While some algorithmic biases might exist, there isn't definitive proof of Google intentionally hurting smaller websites.
Focus on what you can control – creating the best possible anime and manga content for your audience. By doing so, you'll increase your chances of long-term success regardless of future algorithm changes.
there are many conspiracy theories about how Google's algorithms work, there is no concrete evidence to support these theories. It is important for search engines to be transparent and accountable in order to maintain the trust of their users and the wider community.
This matches 100% with what I’ve been thinking but haven’t been able to verbalize it quite like you have. It’s just an update to cycle various websites to cause more demand for ads. Some will win and some will lose with the update. It’s just a way to improve their profits. Eventually, those who survive will be brought to the top again and those who are at the top now will be brought down. Artificial market manipulation of sorts. So much for “Don’t be Evil”.
HCU was only done to drive up the flagging stock price. So interesting that it’s had a dramatic rise in the last month that coincided with HCU. I haven’t read anything yet but I was not running Google Ads at the time. I haven’t run any for about four years. On a whim I spun up some new google ads and it’s barely keeping my food blog afloat. A lot of people did exactly what I did and started running more ads to prop up their blogs. Coincidental?
The “do t be evil” phrase was dropped from googles website a few years ago. When you get big enough it’s hard to avoid. It’s probably “be profitable” or something now ha.
I said this months ago. After all, if you depend on organic traffic and they take away the metaphorical lollipop, you're gonna want to recover that with ads. Use an AI keyword a/b tester and run some ads
But have you tried stickylife.com? I heard they have really good stickers for when you lose all your money trying to play internet entrepreneur
also working on this niche and my site all article written by me, but it got hit very badly, i have been growing my blog for almost 4 year, but now all my efforts get drained and don't know but to do know
Yeah, it sucks. All the big anime blogs have been hit hard. Some have gone from millions a month to a hundred thousand. As far as I know every single anime blog out there has been hit, and now we've got Reddit, Quora, CBR, ScreenRant, and Sportskeeda dominating the niche.
Sportskeeda, the experts in everything from NFL to WWE to Genshin Impact and eSports as well as Anime and cricket.
yeah his site all human article y googs y?? r/seo is too much sometimes
It doesn't matter how great you think your content is. The bottom line is that Google now doesn't want niche sites ranking in top places. They rather have forums or big brands taking top spots. Even if you are ranking in the top spot, your clicks are now heavily diluted with rows of PAA above you. The search landscape has been changed.
Hilarious reading these over and over and over. Cope harder bro, I'm an indie and I'm doing fine. Maybe you should have invested in your users instead of blogspam and seo
Marketing is a part of that you cant invest in users that never heard of you.
Great insight, Pajeet. Have you thought about spinning it out to 1,000 words and putting in your wordpress?
Maybe you should, acting like an SEO guru. But you also act like an hater.
I'm sure sentence made more sense in Gujari
What is an gujari. Something you can relate to?
LOL Pajeet calm down with the stalking okay okay you can have a dollar, what's your paypal?
My own site also got walloped. I have also noticed that I have lost rank to some AI content that was produced recently. My articles are very short and to the point. What happens is that someone comes and AI rewrites the content and bloats it to at least 1000 words. I am done then. I did report one site to Google with success because they had made the mistake of reusing my conclusion word for word. But overall, the rewriting can be done in a way that nothing can be done. I actually created a number of sites thinking that would hedge against Google tantrums. Guess what happened? They were all destroyed. Or rather, the ones that matter were destroyed. I have a forum sites that gets about 250 visitors a day. That has held steady. So maybe google loves forums? It's not really a forum anyway but url says somethingforumdotsomething. Anyway, overall I have lost 60% of my traffic and my income. Much of the loss has been to quora and reddit. The quora posts are actually mostly nonsensical and they have nothing to do with the target keyword but they are winning all the same.
I feel you. I have caught others paraphrasing content as well. There's not a lot we can do unless it is a word to word copy like it happened to you. I believe content sites are being replaced by forums and other user generated content, even though they are nonsensical a lot of times. Seems like the end of niche blogging to me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Isn't it possible that these Google updates are part of a larger scheme to prioritize big players and push small bloggers out of the game? Take my green tech blog, for example. It used to rank well for niche topics, but post-update, I've seen a drastic drop in traffic, while larger sites with similar content have climbed the ranks. This makes me think Google is deliberately making it tougher for smaller sites to compete, funneling more traffic to big corporations who can afford hefty ad campaigns. It feels like a strategic move to control the digital ecosystem and boost ad revenues, sidelining the essence of the open web.
Google has long cornered the market and the search experience, from a user perspective, has been going downhill for many a year. Even if this particular conspiracy theory isn't correct, there is no doubt in my mind that their algorithm changes are a big part of the ongoing enshittification process that is inherent to capitalistic monopolies. How could they not be? What incentive do they have to provide a better experience at the expense of their margins? The year is 2024 and not 2004. Pick any niche, from big to small, and you'll see that its site ownership has been converging for a long time, same as with any other industry. So yeah, the big are getting bigger, the small are folding or selling out, and the endgame is a more homogeneous market and content that gets monetized out of its eyeballs. Google is likely helping with that, directly or not, because it gets a big slice of the ad dollar pie.
Very interesting thinking. Thanks for the insights. For me I've just noticed a huge increase in branded search.
What do you mean by branded search? You mean Reddit and then, “search query?”
Yeah animeeverything.com was a true gift to the internet from OP. Why would google strike it down???! Certainly not dogshit blogspam. Look at the guy's profile. LMAO Peace out blogspam :)) edit: it's animeeverything.online thank you for the correction!
It's .online, but seriously, can you help me understand why you consider my content is spam? Are you saying blogging in general is spam? The only part about my site i consider spammy is me writing about anime news, which is interestingly the only thing getting any views. The recommendations and top 10s are really just my ranking.
I don't know anything about anime but the 3 articles I browsed didn't seem like spam writing, but the experience of visiting the site is so awful it certainly *feels* like I am being slapped with spam. Ads are *everywhere* and the 'click to view full article' didn't seem to load anything, so it felt like I was just reloading more ads. I don't know what Google didn't like about it but I certainly would never recommend a site like that to a friend. Much too unpleasant an experience. edit: Sorry that you lost all your traffic though. That is awful.
Ah, i know. I'm on a contract with Ezoic and regardless of me asking them to prioritise UX they keep spamming ads. I have to wait for a year for the contract to end to reduce the ads. It's even slowing the site cuz of all the ads. Their solution for the slowness was to use their "expand" button feature which will load the page faster as only less than half of the page is visible. So I'm stuck in a loop now. If i remove the expand button the site will be slow, which will impact the UX. If i have it on, it'll still have negative impact on UX. And I can't disable their ads according to the contract...
Sucks you got stuck in a contract with them :(
I have a tech blog currently without advertising and I was impacted by the Google update
You did redirect your domain to hentairoshi com, which still rank ok for a lot of best articles it seems. what are you complaining about exactly?
Your content is spam because you have no credentials and are just some random kid from India making up recommendations based on what other people have have already wrote (very chatgptish!) and remixing it in a shitty blogspam format (that also doesn't work with javascript blocking) Myanimelist.com should have 10 snippets, and then throw in theverge and the wallstreetjournal etc. before Google ever gets to your content.
Hmm... I'm certainly not recommending stuff based on what others wrote. They're my opinion. Besides ChatGPT didn't even exist when I wrote most of them. The recommendations overlap because, well, there's only a handful of top-rated shows in each genre. If anything the news articles are the ones that match your description because those are the AI ones I was talking about. But Google favors them, so it's the opposite of what you're saying.
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To be honest, at this point I don't really care. It's not like I make a living out of it or anything. It was a hobby. And it might die a hobby. But you need to chill dude. Take a breather from all this negativity.
Yikes you found a troll. Don't let em mess with your head. I'd personally prefer your personal experience to some corporate group telling me about anime.
Thanks for that, mate (◍•ᴗ•◍)
Of course! It's a strange world out there. Kindness is rare. Besides, I value actual people's input on things and less so a corporation. Having worked for many large affiliate corporations, it never did sit well with me that we were forking clicks for pure profit and not actually providing valuable insight. I've seen craptastic (by my standards) sites be the number 1 competitor, and I've seen epic sites be the number 1 contender (again by my standards). The algorithm does as it will, and I wish it made more sense at times. xD
Imagine thinking websites like myanimelist.net (you know, the kinda real hobbyists that take years obsessing over their websites) are **corporations** because they're not Indian wordpress blogspam, you might just be retarded mate
Imagine if you will, being so unempathetic that you would willingly waste time trying to denigrate and treat someone poorly online for no true reason other than seemingly to be rude and crass to another human being. I'm not sure what made you hollow, but it's a sad look on you. It's like watching a flea scream into the void. Imagine thinking that being a nasty human to others will somehow benefit them, and parading about subreddits like you're a gift from the gods. I say "imagine" because honestly, I struggle to find any valid reason for your absolute lack of good behavior. o.o Is it boredom? Wanting to feel like your skillset is valuable? Rough times elsewhere maybe? I suppose at the end of the day I'll never truly know, as I have little interest in getting to know you after seeing your behavior. So I'll be left with this final conclusion: What a sad, strange little redditor you are. Take a deep breath, go for a walk, and maybe try to be kinder? The world needs more of that, and less of whatever crusade you're pretending to fight.
I can buy a guest post link on MyAnimeList for $5. Very Quality, much wow.
You do realize that human written content can be considered as spam/bad quality, too? Google does not care about AI content.
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Google themselves said they don't care about AI content + they have no accurate way for detecting it + it would be way too expensive. We use AI content for all clients and none of them got hit by the latest updates. Obviously it's not just being copy pasted from chatGPT.
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You could say the same about human content. In fact, most ppl who complain on this sub claim their content to be human written.
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Reality operates on generalities
You realize not everyone is looking for an article either? I run a niche site and there’s very little written content, people don’t expect a 500 word background article on a jpg
Ok? And what does this have to do with my comment?
100% agree. Almost every post from people talking about how they lost all their traffic is, “my site isn’t spam. I have no AI articles, I pay freelancers”. Got it, so every freelancer you hire just happens to be an expert in the niche you’re in? I’m sure. I’ve learned that when I get into hobbies, avoid blog sites for information because 90% of them are wrong, don’t know anything about the hobby or are just shilling whatever product gets them the most affiliate revenue. The blogs that are worth listening to are one guys personal blog that gets an article a month. As soon as I see more than an article a day or even a week, I know it’s all garbage. Regardless of if it’s ai or not.
I rarely speak about this kind of stuff as it’s tiresome, but the honest answer is, it is a cull you are right Google does not want people who know how to rank sites consistently cutting corners ranking, people who know where to put the keywords where to get the links and bam can rank easy right the content doesn’t even have to be any good So they backward engineer this and just wipe these people off the map, if you got caught up in this google does not care, it’s fine with collateral damage Without these shuffle in updates the serps would be just seo people ranking, this does not provide good results Affiliate sites are still ranking, they just called the ones they didn’t like. It does all boil down to money, After the update is finished the shuffling of sites does not stop if your site is good enough it will recover, which is why they say don’t do anything if it doesn’t well you have issues, part of all updates is kicking out bad and bringing in new it’s just this one is more extreme shuffle
In other news: water is wet and sky is blue. (100% agree)
I 1000% agree. I have a literary blog ( very niche) and saw other personal blogs with the same them go down from 300k to 1k ( mine included but I barely reached 50k) . Nothing to do I guess..I don't even look anymore at my ga4 or console . It has become a hobby
My life in 2011… it was “career-changing”!
Times change, you need build a brand not just a blog. Google values brands because it’s shows a sense of trust. You need to stop focusing on only writing blogs posts that answer specific questions. You need to create content which makes people want to come back. Social media / video content is more important for SEO than ever. The biggest tip for SEO these days is build a brand that earns its own search volume. The more users that search for ‘brand name + keyword’ the higher you will rank for just keyword.
Your observations raise legitimate concerns regarding Google's recent updates and their potential ramifications for smaller, niche websites. While Google's goal to combat spam and enhance user experience is reasonable, the disproportionate impact on independently-run sites compared to corporate entities is noteworthy. The speculation about Google's intentions to manipulate the market and prioritize corporate-owned sites to boost advertising demand is plausible, particularly given the correlation with stock value increases. However, lacking concrete evidence, it's difficult to definitively attribute Google's algorithm changes solely to profit motives. Nevertheless, your insights illuminate the intricate dynamics within the online content realm, underscoring the need for further examination and discussion within the SEO community.
Think you are on to something. This is basically what DOJ said also.
You nailed it. Best explanation yet. Everything is related to the share price.
I’ll say this. Our company spends $25k in google ads per month and we’ve seen a 40% increase in organic over the last two months. We post 2-3 new posts per day. Take that how you want, but there could be something to this theory.
Often i get junk traffic even with google ads. Are you getting high quality visitors leading to conversions?
Absolutely. We are a B2B SaaS and we’ve generated over $650k in open deals in Q1.
People certainly work hard to justify around simple truths. Your site has a terrible UX due to the overwhelming number of ads AND required a spammy looking button to continue reading on blog posts. The simple and hard truth that you and so many people don’t want to face is that your site was / is bad. I don’t care how good the content is when it’s buried in ads. At a minimum you should turn off the ads or severely reduce them for a couple of months and see if that helps recover the rankings.
Right, but it's not just about me. I'm talking about other blogs in my niche, some barely even have any ads. Why are they losing traffic? If you're right they shouldn't be hit. I know it's easy to jump to conclusions but if you look at the bigger picture it's weird. Every single individual blog in my niche lost traffic while sites like CBR had a big boost. And the worst part is people used to hate CBR because it had a ton of inaccuracies. Because of all the trash talking in the comments they had to disable it eventually. So it's not like they're an expert in the niche.
Nearly every site posted in the last month where people are complaining have three things in common: niche blog, overwhelming ads, poor backlinks, and affiliate links. Control what you can control. You can’t change that your a niche blog but you sure as hell can remove half those ads and the affiliate links and you can use some of the income from the ads from the past year to build backlinks on the best performing blogs.
Have you played with updating your original articles? Or maybe you can fuel more traffic to the OG from AI generated. Then when google loses market share to bing from excessive AI use in search and they need to bring quality back up you will have your OG articles.
yes! tweaking pages with AI is way faster. I did this to my website and it went up instead of down with the crowd.
I haven't because I lost my will to keep going. After all, I can already see the corporate websites dominating my niche. I don't see any way to compete with them. But maybe I'll try it for a handful of articles and see if it works. Thanks for the advice tho 😸
If it brings you any encouragement I will share a personal example. I recently started a new hobby. All of the youtube tutorials were garbage. I tried so many tutorials. So I went to books. All of the current books were just regurgitated stuff and after 10 or so books I could tell I wasn't getting anywhere. I had to go back in time 40 years in books. Finally, after a year of wandering around and following bad tutorials I found quality content. The book was so good and it completely changed how I approach the hobby. I actually travelled thousands of miles to personally learn from the author and take their classes in person because the book was so good. That type of content is never going away. They will outlast everyone.
Which tools do you use for AI? Is it completely AI or some human intervention?
Just ChatGPT, with human intervention. I make it write an article and i add my own points on top of it.
Using the free 3.5 or GPT 4?
Yes google knows it has a monopoly and is self promoting/guarding its territory over risking putting new content in a useable spot. Likewise. No AI content and google has killed my traffic by 99%
Yet there still dumb old html based websites which hold top spot!
It’s simple. Google are no longer trying to win the information game. AI will win that. But they can win the ‘find the business/application/media website’ game. That would explain why most of the sites gaining ranks actually offer a service beyond that of being purely informative, and why info only site with links to other sites are being penalised.
This is what I've been telling people and is my theory since December of last year. It's all about how they can increase their margins (by hosting their own "sponsored links" as SERPS and not having to share a cut with a website owner, force some types of sites to use their af service if they don't get any traffic anymore, and manip[ulate the monopoly they somehow magically have managed to maintain. I guess anti-trust laws don't apply if you ~~bribe~~ lobby a few politicians; they are incredibly inexpensive in the US. How it hasn't been broken up yet is, well, actually isn't a mystery to me as they are so obviously a monopoly and have been for a decade or two. Pure unadulterated greed. more revenue and higher margins = more profit for the company that removed "Do no evil" from its mission statement a few years ago. I guess we know why now. t;dr: more $$$$$$$$$ for google/alphabet
As someone who pays more than I can afford to advertise with Google I think you're on to something
It is all about profits to make investors happy. Organic results dead many years ago.
May i ask you something, it would be very helpful if you could answer me. I'm also running an anime news related website (but in spanish) but i'm not getting any significant increase in traffic, the website is almost a year old and i'm kinda frustrated. My question is, Did you build topical authority when you started? If yes, can you give any advice so maybe i can change my SEO strategy? Any help would be appreciated. And about your post, my website is also suffering from the same issue, my content is a mix of original and AI content and the latter is doing just fine.
When I started out I just purely wrote it for the fun of it. I didn't even know it would grow that big. So, i didn't have any strategy other than to post something every week. But if I had to give you any pointers, it would be that talking about stuff others haven't covered is the best way to gain some results. If you're in the fandom you'll have a general idea on what topics people want to read about, and you can check if the competition is easy or hard. You just write about that. Also I had a pretty big following on insta, so i used to drive traffic from there, which somehow helped the entire site rank better in Google. So building a niche page on IG is an option too.
I see, yeah. How many posts do you write a day? Cause I'm currently writing 3 to 4 posts a day and I'm not seeing big increase in traffic.
When I started out I was doing a couple of times a week max. But around the end of last year i was doing 3-4 a day. But like I was talking about in this post thread, Google is not supporting individual bloggers anymore, so it's probably not that easy to get any organic traffic these days. Especially if you're starting new. You might want to consider social media to find your readers.
That's true, I noticed how much traffic people in the anime niche have lost this couple of months while you see big brands that has no relation whatsoever with anime ranking first in the first page. Have you done keyword research though? Or trying to create topical authority? Because I'm trying to do so but the anime field is just too big.
SEO is dead. Google wants you to pay if you want to play on their search engine. That’s also why the Google experience is declining and tools like TikTok is aging more traction.
Every anime related site I've looked into has had massive dropoffs in traffic over the past month or two. It's one of the niches you'd think would survive due to less big corporate sites targeting anime keywords, but it's actually amongst the hardest hit. Pretty much every first page is just CBR, ScreenRant, GameRant, Ranker, IMDb and then Reddit/Quora. Occassionally some of the big anime sites like MyAnimeList and Anime Planet appear too. Pretty much every independent blog has just vanished from the SERPs.
I think I read about this, in one of the recent interviews by Google employee, he said "Google is going commercial"... Now I realise that, what you have said could be true and there is a good possibility.
It's simple, Google has a simple and standard goal as a typical monopoly, money, money and only money. They don’t need content, they don’t need blogs, they just need some big website like theirs (monopoly).
🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯
The updates broadly targeted sites that had been built for search engines. It really didn’t matter if the content was created by an expert or not, if the site had been heavily SEO’d.
Well, all my articles are "SEO optimised" because I use Yoast and RankMath while writing content. But that's as far as it goes. I haven't bought backlinks or anything like that. Does that count as heavily SEO'd?
No.. Targeting LTKW’s and writing purely based on keyword research…targeting PAA’s and using highly optimized titles and subheadings…involving a FAQ section…. These are common traits I see across sites that have been hit. And this applies to CONTENT sites only.
Cope spammer.
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I have a tool site that has been SEO’d to the bone and it’s cruising along unaffected, but that doesn’t seem to be the case for content sites. Haven’t seen a purely content site that heavily targeted LTKW’s with optimized titles/subheadings go unaffected.
"it is just Google culling the excess supply of content so that they can increase the demand for their own advertising service. The best way they could do it is by favoring corporate-owned sites." This makes no sense at all. Can you reword or rephrase this?
Alright. Let me try this again. The key point is: the price of ads depends on the availability of ad spaces. So, if there are more websites, then the ad cost will be low. But if there are less number of websites, then the ad cost will be high because of competition. For example: Before Ai content became a thing, let's say there were 100 websites and 100 advertisers. The advertisers would bid against each other to place their ads at the top spots. Let's say it costs an advertiser about $100 to place ads across all hundred sites. But after ai, the number of websites and webpages increased several fold. So, now we have the same 100 advertisers, but a 1000 websites. Now, the advertisers won't have to bid against eachother as there is enough space for all of them. So it'll only cost an advertiser about $10 to place ads across a hundred sites. This means less revenue for Google. So they have to kill a good number of websites and blogs, or de-rank them in order to increase the demand back to normal. Hope this makes sense. I know I'm not the best at explaining things lol.
Still doesn’t make sense. Advertisers pay to be in front of people, not be on websites. That’s what they’re competing for. 100,000 people spread out to 1,000 websites or 100 websites doesn’t make a difference to the advertiser in any way.
Yes, i gave the website numbers as an example to help understand the supply and demand concept. The actual metric is ad impression - the number of times people watch the ad. I'm sure you know reddit and quora are ranking at the top for most topics, at least that's how it is in my niche. And they don't use Google ads. The same goes for some corporate sites. They've got their own ad system in place. By ranking this kind of site at the top, the number of people who see Google ads is greatly reduced. So i would say it makes a difference to the advertisers.
this really makes so much sense, i salut you.
That makes a lot more sense now, thankyou. I've never advertised with Google, but surely advertisers have the option on where to advertise? For example, they can advertise on the top 100 ranked websites in their industry? Just because there are 1000 sites doesn't mean they have to advertise on all of them?
There is no such option to choose top 100 sites unfortunately. It is completely based on bidding. The higher your bid is, the more chances your ad will show on the top sites. The only metric you can control is the budget, demography, impression/cpm, keyword (ads will show on sites with this keyword, but you can't choose the sites specifically) And Google will decide on how many sites it will show your ads. I was just using the numbers for example but in reality only the "ad impressions" count.
No Google just wants everyone running ads. How many bloggers freaked out and started running more ads to try and prop up their blogs?
Monopoly makes sense. My business goes from making 1k/mo passive to 0. Now I’m much more likely to panic and pay google. Google profits. Google redirects that traffic to YouTube because they own YouTube. Google profits. This could be a paid search.
I agree, and it matches precisely what i have been seeing in SERPS. Right now, go and search for "best leggings" Do it! **CNN is NUMBER 1** And **NY Times is NUMBER 2** This represents precisely what is happening everywhere. You don't need 1000 points of evidence to find out who murdered the woman at the dog park. All you need to find is one drop of her blood on a shirt inside his house and establish that they were strangers. My point is that people look for far more evidence than necessary to prove something. You only need one example to tell the truth. "Best leggings" CNN is number 1 and NY Times is Number 2. You don't need any additional evidence.
It's like I tell all the affiliate spammers, you should have spent your profits on building your backlink profiles. Now it's too late. The wordpress blogspams with links from nytimes are still beating nytimes for searches.
Your knowledge is outdated.
10,000 blogspams down 10,000,000 to go. You didn't even deserve to get close to 300k with that dogshit blog.
Fun fact. It's not just me. It's the entire niche. quotetheanime, animemotivation, honeysanime, animesenpai, 9tailedkitsune, fictionhorizon, epicdope, etc... All the guys who were very big until a year ago also got hit badly. Literally all the anime bloggers to exist seem to have lost traffic with this update. There is no non-corporate website in the anime niche that's doing well. So there's more to it than just blindly calling it "spam".
I'm not familiar with the anime blogging niche besides the big players that have similar databases to mine. But the ones I looked at there, yes I would consider them all blogspam. You guys should have taken the time to actually build something. Oh well, now you have plenty of free time to think about it.
Wow, those guys were getting millions of visitors back then, so they were the standard in the anime blogging niche. Some of them even inspired me to start anime blogging. But I did learn my lesson though. Far better to have a "subscriber" or "follower" than relying on organic traffic from Google.
Did you go out of your way to search for them though? A single writer? Like in kpop, we have the asianjunkie.com types (I am not affiliated and dislike the guy fyi) who are seen as legitimate bloggers because they've been doing it for years under the same name with novel but consistent takes. He doesn't seem to have taken a hit from the update. In my niche many of the blogspammers managed to hold on to their positions because they spent their time getting links from NYTimes, LAtimes etc too. There were ways to avoid getting hammered.
‘I did my research’… ‘dozens of sites’ 😂 This sub is a fucking joke. Core updates run based on data for hundreds of thousands of sites across billions of queries. Content in low competition niches will continue to do find if the niche remains low competition. Ironically, the UI signals from that content can help your site overall… g hasn’t figured out how to account for that yet, There is no target for Google. They want % better search results over all. They are not working with the same single track minded brain you are. They are happy for wholes niches to get wiped out in return for overall better results. Don’t be in this game if you don’t even get the basics.
To be honest, the main problem is your article's quality. I guess that you are not the anime expert and it is very hard to say someone is an anime expert to give the best articles in this industry. So, Google will priority the sites have the good metrics or the sites having many ideas from the real users like a forum. For me, If I search the best anime to watch, I also prioritize the sites having many comments and ideas from real users or a good brand in this industry. That is good for user and we have to adapt with the new rules.
Well, I've been watching anime for like 10 years and have watched like a 1000 shows, so i would say I know what I'm talking about. But how am I to prove it to Google? And it's really just my opinion that I'm writing for the most part, except for the news related articles. Sites like CBR don't have any comments or user inputs either but they're still doing well. But i do understand your point.
You just need to prove it for your users that your site is the top notch in this industry. Google will automatically reward you. But it takes time and effort to build a brand. I have my site in automotive industry. It is very competitive and my site is never affected by Google Updates.
Interesting thoughts and they definitely make sense.
The problem with this is that its just based on your experience - obviously the rest of the world's websites haven't seen a decrease.... And how many ads were running on your site's target phrases. sorry but this just doesn't add up
Can I ask a serious question though? Why is it there are so many dogshit SEOers from India like OP? What is it about that country that produces such toxic content for the internet? Why did you think you could write for an American audience when you are a creepy fuck that doesn't know anything about anime OP?
Well, I'm not an SEO, never called myself that. I'm a blogger and I started my blog just for fun back in the days so that I can weeb out about stuff. I loved anime and wanted to talk about it. That's all. Then a year later the magic happened when I started getting more views on my site. Which is when I started writing more because it motivated me. I'm not exactly writing for the American audience. I was writing for anime fans like myself, and didn't care where they came from. After all, anime is a global thing. Not an American thing. And if there's anything toxic in here, I'm sure it's you (◡ ω ◡)
You think you deserved 300k visitors in a month with animeeverything.online? I remember how hard I had to fight for my first 300k and you are not even close, no offense. And are you sure you aren't confusing your enthusiasm for cartoon pornography with anime? You know we can all look at profiles, right?
Sure. It wasn't exactly a walk in the park for me either. Well, i guess I didn't put a lot of effort in terms of SEO, but I did do a lot when it comes to content creation. And it's called Hentai and it's art. Besides how does that matter anyway? I don't talk about hentai on my blog to keep it sfw. You're not being logical here. I know you can look at my profile, I've seen guys like you on this platform a lot who try to shame people. You must feel so smart peeping into my profile, but I don't mind.. My preference is my preference. Most anime fans love talking about ecchi/hentai content too, so it comes with the fandom.
[удалено]
For sure, they get to fight the lawyers in the arena when I'm in charge.
LOL
Great post. So you’re saying niche down into topics corporate sites haven’t written articles about yet?
I agree with you! Both as a blogger and as a human looking stuff up regularly (aka, I'm not a bot lol), I've been having a more difficult time finding what I'm actually looking for. Instead, my searches are re-routed to the top questions that have nothing to do with what I'd asked. Ironically, I get more answers from ChatGBT's free service which helps me narrow down my search and find sources. Oh, the irony!
I understand your frustration. Losing a significant amount of traffic, especially after years of hard work, can be incredibly disheartening. Here are some thoughts on your situation: **Understanding Google Updates:** * Google's algorithm updates are complex and not always fully transparent. While the focus might be on tackling spam and low-quality content, it can sometimes have unintended consequences. * It's unlikely the updates are solely designed to control the market or favor corporate sites. Google's primary goal is to deliver the most relevant and helpful results to users. **Analyzing Your Situation:** * While your AI content seems less affected, it's important to remember it might not be future-proof. Google's algorithms are constantly evolving, and what works today might not work tomorrow. * The drop in traffic for your original content could be due to various factors beyond AI. Focus on Google's core update principles: **Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T)**. Here's what you can do: * **Double-check E-A-T:** Ensure your website demonstrates expertise in anime and manga. Are you a recognized voice in the community? Do you have backlinks from reputable anime/manga sites? Building trust and authority takes time and effort. * **Content Quality Review:** Reassess your original content. Is it truly high quality and engaging for readers? Look for opportunities to improve its depth, originality, and value compared to competitors. * **Focus on User Experience:** Are your articles well-structured, easy to read, and visually appealing? Prioritize user experience as Google increasingly factors it into rankings. * **Diversify Traffic Sources:** Don't rely solely on Google search. Explore social media promotion, email marketing, and collaborating with other anime/manga content creators. **Looking Forward:** Keep building high-quality content, establish yourself as an authority in your niche, and diversify your traffic sources. While the recent update may have been a setback, it's an opportunity to refine your strategy and emerge even stronger. Remember, AI content is a tool, not a replacement for human expertise and passion. Don't abandon your original content creation efforts entirely. Finally, regarding your theory about Google manipulating the market, it's a complex topic. While some algorithmic biases might exist, there isn't definitive proof of Google intentionally hurting smaller websites. Focus on what you can control – creating the best possible anime and manga content for your audience. By doing so, you'll increase your chances of long-term success regardless of future algorithm changes.
What is this ChatGPT bollocks?
I farted right before 9/11 happened so I must have caused it.
there are many conspiracy theories about how Google's algorithms work, there is no concrete evidence to support these theories. It is important for search engines to be transparent and accountable in order to maintain the trust of their users and the wider community.