For some time, I’ve hesitated to share this information, hoping that Google would recognize the damage it has caused and take steps to correct the issue. I had hoped that Google would work to restore the traffic that millions of websites had rightfully earned over the past 15+ years by following the company’s own guidance.
Alas, after nearly a year of witnessing the carnage, I can no longer remain silent. There have been numerous twists and turns, as well as a lot of wishful thinking, but the reality is that what Google is doing to non-big brand websites – which encompasses millions of small and mid-sized business (SMB) sites – is quite devastating.
A challenging year of Google updates.
Here’s a chart from Lily Ray, one of the top SEOs (Search Engine Optimizers) in the world, which she posted today. (the part about “did not make a public stink about anything” is sarcasm):
“HCU” stands for Helpful Content Update, which was Google’s update last September (2023) that they said was to fight spammy/scammy web content. There was an additional core update in March 2024 (that lasted until late April/early May), which seemed to make things even worse for SMBs.
Someone asked Lily in the thread whether she sees a pattern to the niches that are being penalized, and she said, “No, it runs the gamut but the sites are almost always informational and monetize by ad/affiliate. Could be anything within that universe which is a lot of sites – travel, gaming, recipes, anything.”
Kruse Control’s organic traffic is down 90%. All content on the site is my blood, sweat and tears for the last 15 years. I’m in a niche (automotive retail) that is not written about a lot, and have no Google ads on my site. I used to rank on page one of search fairly often. At one point, my site was receiving 25,000 visits per month and now it’s down to 2,000-2,500.
Let’s talk about Google and Reddit.
Reuters: On February 21st 2024, social media platform Reddit struck a deal with Google to make its content available for training the search engine giant’s artificial intelligence models. The contract with Alphabet-owned Google is worth about $60 million per year, according to one of the sources.
Here we are 6 months later:
Notice any correlation between the earlier chart above and this one? Yeah, they seem to both have a swift and dramatic change in traffic around the same time: September 2023, which happens to be the same time as the HCU. They also mirror each other: The first shows a dramatic and devastating traffic decline and the second shows a dramatic and crazy traffic increase. Hmmmmm.
It will be interesting to see how the US DOJ feels about this “partnership” between Google and Reddit. Seems very anti-trusty/impeding commercey, (allegedly) but I’m not an expert. I just pay attention and know that these massive tech companies have too much power. All SMBs and their website people played Google’s game for a very long time. We all did what Google guided us to do and now they are changing the game.
Antitrust is not just a legal concept, it can have many rewards.
Earlier this month (August 5th), Reuters published a story saying a U.S. judge ruled that Google violated antitrust law, spending billions of dollars to create an illegal monopoly and become the world’s default search engine, the first big win for federal authorities taking on Big Tech’s market dominance.
“The ruling paves the way for a second trial to determine potential fixes, possibly including a breakup of Google parent Alphabet (Google’s parent company), which would change the landscape of the online advertising world that Google has dominated for years.”
The history of Google Search Division vs Google Ads Division.
In Google’s early days, these two divisions were interconnected. But, as Google’s advertising business grew in scale and complexity, the company gradually separated the search and advertising divisions into more distinct operations.
By the late 2000s, Google had established a clear separation between its core search technology group and its rapidly expanding advertising and monetization teams. This allowed each division to specialize and focus on their respective areas of expertise, while still maintaining coordination and integration between the two critical components of Google’s business model.
Remember this name: Prabhakar Raghavan.
Ed Zitron wrote a piece in late April, “The Man Who Killed Google Search.” It details how Prabhakar Raghavan, Google’s former Head of Ads – led a coup so that he could run Google Search, and how an email chain from 2019 began a cascade of events that would lead to him running Google Search into the ground. Read Ed’s piece, it is well worth your time.
Ed’s podcast, Better Offline, dives deeper into how Prabhakar Raghavan has destroyed Google Search as we know it. Here’s the podcast episode link “The Man Who Killed Google Search.” In the episode, Ed says to keep saying Prabhakar Raghavan’s name so that everyone knows it, and I feel compelled to oblige.
The head of Google Ads becomes the head of Google Search.
In 2020, Prabhakar Raghavan was Head of Ads at Google and took over the role of Head of Search from Ben Gomes, amid a push to increase advertising revenue from Google Search.
Joe Youngblood, another SEO I follow, had this to say on August 15th:
“SEO Prediction: Raghavan’s attack on SEO content continues and gets worse during this update.
For example, if you have pages with an exact match keyword title tag, expect that page to lose rankings, the more pages you have like this the more rankings you’ll lose.
From what I’ve seen of sites hit by September and March HCU, there are likely other over-optimization factors being targeted, largely based on the content.
Think of the Helpful Content classifier like Penguin for on-page copy, except its targeted at anyone “creating pages for search” the very thing Google endorsed for decades.
Previous versions appeared to ignore certain websites, all brand names, my guess is this trend also continues.
This update won’t help HouseFresh and it will hurt a lot more small websites and bloggers, creating an uneven web where small and independents have a nearly impossible task of growing. Much like Facebook today, without extreme effort it’s nearly impossible to build a useful organic audience. This is all by design, Google knows the bigger companies will keep buying ads no matter what, so eliminating the smaller ones helps them earn more to pay Google more down the road. It also means small websites using free traffic to grow will now instead turn to PPC.
Google doesn’t care, by the end of this update a massive volume of big publishers will own the top of the rankings. Along with pure SEO spammers who are able to carve out niches between now and the next big update.
If I am right and this update does not represent an about face or recognition that SEO content followed Google’s decades-long advice – then I believe Google is dead.
The open web needs to move on.
I thought about this and I believe Joe is correct.
The quality of Google Search results has become increasingly problematic. Far too often, the information returned is inaccurate or misleading. The proliferation of misinformation and low-quality spam content is deeply concerning. This is especially troubling given that the public has come to rely on Google as a trusted source of information for decades.
Google’s actions have had detrimental effects on many websites, content creators, small businesses, and individuals. The company appears to be prioritizing profit over providing high-quality, reliable search results. This has led me to use alternative search engines more frequently, as I have been unable to find the accurate, authoritative information I need on Google. The long-term consequences of Google’s choices in this regard are likely to be significant, as users lose faith in the platform as a dependable resource.
My advice going forward.
I’ve only scratched the surface on this subject, but I feel compelled to share what I’ve learned from over a decade of experience in the digital content space. Coming from day-to-day dealership operations, I became interested in the opportunities for dealers to leverage digital content, such as online ratings, helpful videos, social selling, and website content.
However, I’m concerned that we’ve reached a turning point when it comes to attracting large organic audiences (without paid promotion). If you, like me and millions of other small-to-medium businesses (SMBs), rely on Google Search for organic traffic, you should consider rethinking your strategy. Organic traffic from Google Search appears to be declining in viability.
While social media platforms are still useful as a way to engage current and future customers, you should not expect to generate significant leads through them. Instead, I would recommend focusing on building and leveraging your email list. Be consistent with your email campaigns, ideally sending them weekly, to continuously provide value to your customers.
The reality is that you cannot trust large tech companies like Google to have your best interests in mind. These are profit-driven entities that will prioritize their own bottom line over the needs of small businesses. In essence, you’ve been operating on “rented land” – and now the landlord is coming to extract every last drop of your intellectual property and income. Don’t let them take it. Take proactive steps to reduce your dependence on these behemoths and build more sustainable, direct relationships with your audience.
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