Google HCU

SEOs who sold "HCU recovery" audits/services should issue a refund or be named and shamed

Extremely predatory to capitalize on mfs when they're at their lowest point

Don't just dm me names, don't be afraid to go public

— Jacky Chou (buying online businesses up to $1m) (@indexsy) November 2, 2024

No one has hurt small businesses and caused incidental job loss at scale more than you in the past year.

You’ve chosen greed and corporate favoritism over a fair and sustainable ecosystem and the only solution is to introduce competition. DOJ, we praise your efforts.

— RockAction (@allthewaywego22) November 21, 2024

Looks like the (partial) recovery for https://t.co/xsPoOxl6fX is higher this core update than it was during the August Core Update.

Is Google finally figuring out how to untangle the mess it created with the HCU?

Hopefully this continues and this time it sticks.… pic.twitter.com/8okkK72wKD

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) November 21, 2024

Those complaining that topical authority doesn't exist are the ones the most affected by HCU destroying their sites because the intent of the keywords they were targeting changed.

If Google wants Reddit/Quora threads, YT videos and EComm – Your niche blog won't rank anymore!

— Charles Floate 📈 (@Charles_SEO) September 29, 2024

After a year of silence, I'm finally sharing how our travel publication lost 97% of its traffic – from 1M to 30K monthly readers.

But this isn't about numbers.

🧵 Here's what happens when Google kills authentic travel content…

— ViaTravelers | Destination Travel Blog (@viatravelers) December 13, 2024

Ok, this is getting pretty ridiculous – the HCU classifier is so brutal that Google will go so far as to attribute his original photos to spam sites instead of just sending the clicks to his domain https://t.co/OSivHH0lOa

— Nate Hake (@natejhake) May 2, 2024

I've lost 90% of my Google traffic. Yesterday, I had 34 organic clicks to my website. People actually WANT to find my website and can't. You know how I know? 1/4

— Alicia Gilbert-Marshall ✨SEO (@thealiciamars) May 19, 2024

I am a certified personal trainer. I did the 75 Hard Challenge. I've been a Planet Fitness member for years. I've made Bowflex videos for years. I wrote about these things, but in most cases, those articles have been replaced in the SERPS by articles with no experience/expertise. pic.twitter.com/h2KNW7Ffgf

— a dude called rob (@blogbizznass) May 15, 2024

BREAKING: Reuters is dying. Website traffic has declined by nearly 50% over the past seven months. pic.twitter.com/2aAgEqO5Oy

— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) May 14, 2024

How to rank on Google, a timeline of events

1998-2022
Create content that satisfies a user's search query

2023-2024
Have 10 million users. Create content, but don't try too hard. No, not like that. You should probably sell widgets, preferably your own. Oh, be sure to host a… pic.twitter.com/5c3TdLZwxg

— Cyrus SEO (@CyrusShepard) April 29, 2024

Feeling for all the folks whose business Google has destroyed. 🙏☹️

(from the Raptive FB group) pic.twitter.com/mmtm8ivaeg

— Vik (@onlinedopamine) April 18, 2024

Google destroyed my business

They changed the rules

And they made the decision on behalf of our users that we were no longer what they were looking for

Here's exactly what happened: pic.twitter.com/wjV9KMfhKk

— Luke Jordan (@lr_jordan) April 18, 2024

u know google needs a new update

cause dey DESTROYED great sites just cause …

yes

— BowtiedWhitebat + Read Pinned Tweet or NGMI (@bowtiedwhitebat) April 20, 2024

Good Morning Google Land! This is the April 18 edition of "Core Update Notes". We are now 45 days into the rollout. Yes, 45. First, as of this morning, I still haven't seen any movement across sites heavily impacted by the September HCU(X). I checked the visibility numbers for… pic.twitter.com/XltLRTseID

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) April 18, 2024

A great example of why you shouldn't draw big conclusions about core update performance until the core update is done.

This site is now bouncing back in the last 4 days, after losing major visibility and traffic beginning on March 30. pic.twitter.com/xdSYS1GRL5

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) April 17, 2024

Nothing to see here, just another small publisher completely obliterated by Google for following bad SEO advice.

Imagine starting a business, building a website, quitting your job, hiring people, working, working, working, and then BOOM.

Everything you’ve worked for is gone.… pic.twitter.com/p775q0yB1o

— Kristi Hines (@kristileilani) April 17, 2024

The Google March 2024 core update volatility deepens as we approach the end of the update, some really harsh hits continue to trend https://t.co/AtnX1ETfQH more via @glenngabe pic.twitter.com/sjuNKdYTYp

— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) April 17, 2024

Good Morning Google Land! This is the April 17 edition of "Core Update Notes". We are now 44 days into the rollout of the March core update and it's been quite the ride so far. Huge surges, drops, reversals, and more. For today's update, I had to cover sites heavily impacted by… pic.twitter.com/7MVm4SI4cV

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) April 17, 2024

Oooof, this site has been through the algorithm update ringer for years.

Looks like it's seeing some type of recovery from the Feb 2023 Reviews update, within the last few days.

Site is a product review / affiliate site with review content exclusively about running shoes. pic.twitter.com/FmRBbHfpNw

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) April 13, 2024

Take a look at this screenshot and comment with the first thing that came into your head… pic.twitter.com/7LPGmJ6rel

— Mark A Preston (@MarkPreston1969) April 10, 2024

Crazy. 5 months after completing a major domain migration, WooCommerce will revert the entire thing after traffic goes south

This after assembling "a group of SEO experts and consultants"

Gotta be honest, the chance of things going *worse* after a second migration is easily > 0 https://t.co/yFPT2rBWP7 pic.twitter.com/sOJgUxfT0M

— Cyrus SEO (@CyrusShepard) April 6, 2024

Good morning Google Land! It's the April 6 weekend edition of "Core Update Notes". Like I explained the other day, although there are no HCU(X) recoveries at all (more on that soon), there are some huge recoveries from previous core updates. Below you can see two, one recovering… pic.twitter.com/PIEFGf5WyL

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) April 6, 2024

One of my new sites surged when hcu hit and we were hitting 100k pageviews a month. Then we got wiped out with this March update. Travel niche. pic.twitter.com/pnSjMpAWIA

— ThePoolsideCEO (@ThePoolsideCEO) April 4, 2024

The one benefit of the latest Google algorithm update is that you no longer need Ahrefs or Semrush if you own a niche site.

Just refer to this and it’ll be 99% accurate: pic.twitter.com/GSng9R7uCI

— Ian Nuttall (@iannuttall) April 2, 2024

nOooOoOoO iT's NoT uSeFuL tHiS SpEciFiC scReENshOt HaS tOo MaNY aDs oN iT!

we turned off ads and user metrics didn't change

sites without ads on got absolutely obliterated too

and many of the world's biggest publishers are ridden with ads

fortunately I gave up on this site 7… https://t.co/B2YW9K331d

— Luke Jordan (@lr_jordan) April 3, 2024

These are 5 travel blogs, and there are many, many more where this came from.

These sites have tons of obvious first-hand experience, original photography of them at the places they traveled to, lots of evidence of E-E-A-T, etc.

Are there many things they could still improve?… https://t.co/2xZOBFQ8Wr pic.twitter.com/EplKAbnbVY

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) April 29, 2024

Some of you might find this interesting.

The pSEO website I built was hit by the recent G update (it was designed to be terrible).

But what's interesting… pic.twitter.com/yoKKsP7B38

— Adam Gent (@Adoubleagent) April 3, 2024

There's something insidious with Google's Helpful Content Update

Sites not only dropping after an update, but continuing to slide to near ZERO after many months. Completely wiped out📉

(while nearly identical sites 📈)

So Google, this content is *completely* unhelpful? Really? pic.twitter.com/VlQk3fgVWn

— Cyrus SEO (@CyrusShepard) April 1, 2024

The website that fed me for years was hit by 2023 updates, but I was kinda afloat with ~100 clicks a day.

But yesterday, it was NINE f***ing clicks! FML. Like other SEOs, I find it frustrating.

Just thankful that I am big on diversification & have other sources of $ to survive. pic.twitter.com/4HLXBvJOn6

— Zarina Zeland (@ZarinaZeland) March 16, 2024

Officially have lost 99% of my website traffic. Yesterday was the lowest I've since since I started my site back in 2021. pic.twitter.com/IhBTM4PEAH

— a dude called rob (@blogbizznass) April 1, 2024

Our close competitor has gone from 500k organic per month to literally zero. Brutal. pic.twitter.com/KjrglA26kL

— Gareth Boyd (@garethaboyd) March 29, 2024

In September, they took a nosedive. It happened again in December, and then what little was left declined again in March. pic.twitter.com/FSlFJ62h0S

— Rebekah Edwards (@rebekah_creates) March 28, 2024

Quick update about sites impacted by the September HCU(X): Now that we are two weeks into the March core update, I ran the visibility numbers for several hundred sites impacted the September HCU(X). I haven't seen one that recovered yet. Actually, most were down even more (see… pic.twitter.com/MPFPGZdu9u

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) March 21, 2024

Google got SEO wrong with the HCU update.

& here's why.

(& why I think his site's falling) pic.twitter.com/AD6GNVDvG1

— Thomas Jepsen (@JepsenThomas) April 23, 2024

I shared these sites as the biggest "winners" at the start of the March Core Update… that trend is rapidly reversing course right now.

This is (yet another example) why it's always a good idea to wait until updates have finished rolling out before drawing conclusions…

Also,… pic.twitter.com/t1ziuoxkVW

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) April 23, 2024

Good Morning Google Land! This is the April 22 edition of "Core Update Notes". When I started these quick morning updates, I never thought it would go this long. Please make it stop. 🙂

Let's start with HCU(X) sites. I checked the visibility numbers for 378 sites heavily… pic.twitter.com/CUdR0in57S

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) April 22, 2024

Different site, different outcome. They aren't the same site, so not unusual to see varying impact. Also several DOMAIN NAME CHANGES IN THE FALL OF 2023??? WITH ALL OF THOSE UPDATES?? 🙂 -> Google Explains More About A Domain Name Change (several ccTLDs) and some went south…… pic.twitter.com/vCBfi0hZ22

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) April 24, 2024

What a ride.

March core continues. pic.twitter.com/GRJ0EyjQ5O

— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) April 25, 2024

Pleased to announce we dropped another 30% after the Core Update "finished rolling out" pic.twitter.com/BUCOptuUyl

— Luke Jordan (@lr_jordan) April 29, 2024

The content site model doesn't work anymore.

Across 2061 sites using the Income School Acabado theme:

1. Only 8 have 10,000 organic traffic (according to Semrush data)
2. Average site has just 238 organic traffic
3. Average site has lost 95% of organic traffic since March 2022… pic.twitter.com/XaSRRJLmb4

— Jamie I.F. (@Jamie_IF) April 30, 2024

I used to have a blog that was gaining really good traction, everything was Googled compliant, I refused to do any backlinks, guest posts, etc. and completely trusted Google.
Aaaannnnd it’s gone, Google completely killed it in 2 updates.

— Oli 💻 (@olineagu) March 28, 2024

I’m in the 14th position in Google for this query.

Used to be top 3.

I now rank behind Reddit, quora, Glassdoor and 11 different URLs on Upwork.

And 4 sponsored links if you count those I’m position 18.

That means almost 900 people a month are scrolling to the 14th… pic.twitter.com/MYb6cOX4xI

— Morgan Overholt (Freelancer Files) (@MorganOMedia) April 5, 2024

This is the Google Pandemic 😷 It has nothing to do with ads. I have a site, zero AI, almost 600 pages written by an expert, researched by an expert, fact checked etc. The expert links to LinkedIn etc. Google are taking sites out randomly and they shall continue each update.

— Marc Mulvaney (@mulvaney_marc) April 1, 2024

Some thoughts about the completion of the March core update:
*How in the world could Google NOT explain it ended a week ago? Seriously, did someone fall asleep at the wheel? Maybe they didn't replace the two people I shared a few weeks ago that were monitoring it for them. See… pic.twitter.com/krYzxhmZ5I

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) April 26, 2024

This is what a crushed site looks like. Today I'll end with 17 Google Search clicks…down from 1500 average. pic.twitter.com/9PdNGCdpo0

— a dude called rob (@blogbizznass) April 26, 2024

Well the Google March core update is almost over and my travel blog, that I have worked so hard on has almost disappeared from search. Honestly, I’m devastated. It feels very unfair, but hopefully I can keep inspiring you to travel through social media

— Samantha Oppenheimer (Sam Opp) (@findlovetravel) March 30, 2024

Dear @Google ,

As long as you continue using SGE and no-click search results, you are normalizing content theft and SEO manipulation.

Furthermore, as long as you load search results with ads and sponsored results, you imply that the primary purpose of search is sales. This…

— Katie Berry 🤦🏻‍♀️ (@thatkatieberry) March 30, 2024

This site is filled with fantastic original photos & authentic first-hand experience

Another example of Google destroying livelihoods of creators who followed their “by people, for people” & EEAT guidance https://t.co/GcHxdZxRXH

— Nate Hake (@natejhake) March 21, 2024

It's time for SEOs to admit that Google have pulled wool over folks eyes. There is no recovery. A lot of time, money and resources have been wasted since September.

— Daniel Hart (@Okayy_Dan) March 21, 2024

Here is recap of what Google is doing to end my website. I have worked really hard for the last 20 years at this to see an algorithm update essentially end business as I know it. It's a long read with lots of charts and examples https://t.co/y840ZGsgqR

— Mike Hardaker (@mountainweekly) April 25, 2024

Google has reduced my traffic to almost a few clicks a day.

Since September, I didn't do anything with my blog. I just let it sit and bring in some pocket change. I was discouraged, to say the least. But I didn't want to give up. Having tasted some amazing additional monthly…

— Alex Hawker (@hawker_alex) April 29, 2024

Marie thanks for raising your voice. It is difficult, I have 20 Employees, and I am not receiving the enough money from Adsense and MGID cause Core Updates are affecting me.

At this way, we will end up closing and thats "how to kill a human website bout music and enter.. news"😭

— Jordan (@JordanOmana) May 1, 2024

Hey Google

Sorry to do this on X but you won’t take my call.

I’m breaking up with you.

We just want different things, I like being weird and silly and producing fun content for my audience.

I don’t know what you want, I don’t think you do either. However I’m tired of…

— Michael Dinich (@MichaelDinich) May 1, 2024

Two months ago, @ThisHouseFresh sounded the alarm about Google killing independent sites.

I wrote an update on things I’ve learned and things that happened after publishing that article: https://t.co/6s1IMEEdWE

SPOILER: We have lost 91% of traffic from Google since then.

— Gisele Navarro (@ichbinGisele) May 2, 2024

Here’s a competitor i used to look up to so highly

They dominated the iPhone troubleshooting space for 6-8 years but they collapsed due to the March 5th update

Some of you may look at this as a bad thing but they raked in roughly $15k to $30k p/m for 6-8 years

That’s roughly… pic.twitter.com/zMK7Zd7yFY

— KK (@kksniche) May 2, 2024

Wow, that's a bold move. But also not entirely surprising.

I've been including this subfolder in my presentations (often without naming names) for years.

If you look at the visibility of this subfolder and its performance with recent updates, seems like the writing was on the… https://t.co/bKeWU0jLdG pic.twitter.com/BrNb5wOE1q

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) May 3, 2024

Kill a blog then suggest ads to recover the traffic.

Smart move Google. 🤦‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/Q8kkVoa0Yo

— Alek Asaduryan (@Ldnbox) May 5, 2024

Website I'm auditing with content manually written by industry expert, no AI.

We're talking top, top-tier quality content

Google: It's overoptimized & we'd rather serve up Reddit.

🤦‍♂️🤦‍♀️🤦 pic.twitter.com/TkyNEtTdqH

— Thomas Jepsen (@JepsenThomas) May 6, 2024

Google is destroying independent content creators.

I also saw 90% traffic loss since Sept HCU. Absolute disaster for many like me and Retro Dodo.

Meanwhile, Google steals our content to feed it's AI but doesn't rank us. Content good enough to steal but not rank. https://t.co/0OqTJ0782x

— Jake (@usemyhandle) May 8, 2024

IMO Recovering from helpful content isn't a quick fix. You can't just do a few things. It's a ML algo, which means you look too much like the spam sites. That takes drastic changes – and time.

Sadly I don't have a client hit by the algo to do a recovery case study, but I'm…

— Ryan Jones (@RyanJones) May 14, 2024

They steal our content.

They wipe out our traffic.

They penalize us for having affiliate links or ads to make up for that loss of income.

They tell us to ditch thin content, then later admit that GSC was underreporting clicks.

They tell us expertise and experience are… https://t.co/SJVHuVkYZK

— Katie Berry 🤦🏻‍♀️ (@thatkatieberry) May 23, 2024

This is fucking crazy. Looking at a site that was destroyed by HCU (tens of millions of monthly sessions):

They dont appear for the text on their homepage anymore, BUT, the Generative AI answer literally posts their homepage text verbatim, above the SERPs.

— Martin MacDonald (@searchmartin) May 16, 2024

Pew 'digital decay' study -> About 38% of webpages that existed in 2013 are unavailable now and 8% of pages from 2023 are unavailable; 23% of news pages have at least one broken link

*23% of news webpages contain at least one broken link, as do 21% of webpages from government… pic.twitter.com/axPUk9HH3s

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) May 19, 2024

Warning, my e-commerce site has been killed by the hcu. If your site describes the product very well, it is considered an evaluation site.

— Arnaud Sion (@LeToamasina) May 28, 2024

I think it’s obvious that Google just wanted to steal everyone’s content for themselves.

— Taylor Berg bluesky @taylorberg (@taylorannberg) May 8, 2024

Honored to have been featured in a recent Washington Post article discussing changes happening in search & how it’s changing TF2.

What a fun & interesting time to be in the blogging and internet space.

The article 👇👇 pic.twitter.com/kM5ypVsh5c

— Jake Boly | That Fit Friend (@Jake_Boly) May 13, 2024

Hey Google

Sorry to do this on X but you won’t take my call.

I’m breaking up with you.

We just want different things, I like being weird and silly and producing fun content for my audience.

I don’t know what you want, I don’t think you do either. However I’m tired of…

— Michael Dinich (@MichaelDinich) May 1, 2024

offenses can't be pointed out.

At any one point, I have access to 50+ GSC accounts that have been hit by HCU to varying extents.

In addition, I've looked at hundreds of sites that have been squashed to see what similarities they have.

You start seeing patterns.

— Thomas Jepsen (@JepsenThomas) April 29, 2024

Great post, thank you. I am waiting for more on this subject. My 7 sites with really good content were hit by both September and March updates. They are in Polish language, different topics covered, most of content wrotten by experts… no improvements help…

— MG (@MG92200723) May 1, 2024

Marie thanks for raising your voice. It is difficult, I have 20 Employees, and I am not receiving the enough money from Adsense and MGID cause Core Updates are affecting me.

At this way, we will end up closing and thats "how to kill a human website bout music and enter.. news"😭

— Jordan (@JordanOmana) May 1, 2024

Two months ago, @ThisHouseFresh sounded the alarm about Google killing independent sites.

I wrote an update on things I’ve learned and things that happened after publishing that article: https://t.co/6s1IMEEdWE

SPOILER: We have lost 91% of traffic from Google since then.

— Gisele Navarro (@ichbinGisele) May 2, 2024

We are one of those success stories google photographer was actually here shooting us for a second feature as the update started in March and crashed our site 📉

— Morgan (@CharlestonCraft) April 24, 2024

Two clients' last day was officially today, so I sent out wrap-up info with links to their resources and final invoice confirmations.

I'm not proud to say I've spent most of my day reading a book and trying not to cry.

They're my two oldest clients. Both of them were guaranteed…

— Rebekah Edwards (@rebekah_creates) April 22, 2024

My emails to sites hit by Google's HCU are becoming condolence letters, and it freakin' breaks my heart

— Cyrus SEO (@CyrusShepard) April 22, 2024

I have canceled my ahrefs subscription. After paying for 70 months, I found myself paying $199 for just occasionally checking how much traffic has dropped for competitors and me.

— Colin (@p0larBoy) April 21, 2024

Off topic luke but really hate when HCU did to your site man !!

That shits so depressing!!

Hope you get things back up so social media traffic !!

— Bakes (@Bakez2) April 19, 2024

Over the past month I've been chatting with a few SEOs who are really worried about their future.

I feel that there is an uncertainty in the air that I haven't felt since Panda and Penguin first launched when hundreds of SEOs became PPC specialists overnight.

My question to you…

— Mark A Preston (@MarkPreston1969) April 17, 2024

Dear @googlesearchc,

Thank you for rewriting my title to be the slug of my article for some reason.

I understand that all you care about is the quality that appears on the SERP, and therefore just want to say thanks and you're doing a great job.

Sincerely,
I am losing my mind pic.twitter.com/GOPExiA639

— Rebekah Edwards (@rebekah_creates) April 16, 2024

This "hidden gem" is ranking in position 9 for "netflix account," which has a monthly search volume of 143,000 in the US.

Posted 6 hours ago by "Martin Smith." pic.twitter.com/PDDSyopZ4K

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) April 12, 2024

I have a friend who bought a website for £50k about 24 months ago. It was hit by HCU 😢
He wants to sell and get out of blogging.
Anyone with a serious interest please DM me.
Please don’t just try to get a look at the domain. Proof of funds needed.

— carl broadbent (@UKCarlBroadbent) April 10, 2024

It’s a disaster tbh https://t.co/iKGFdTOt18

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) April 9, 2024

The hardest part about doing SEO right now is when a forum thread from 2006 is ranking #1.

I guess this is the new way to rank:

– Don't create updated content
– Don't worry about content structure or organization
– Don't use subject matter experts
– Don't make it easy to find… pic.twitter.com/GYuOtRywwl

— Nathan Gotch (@nathangotch) April 4, 2024

Checked again this morning across 360+ sites impacted by the September HCU(X). None have recovered and most are down more since the March core update rolled out. I can't imagine we have much time left in the rollout… so time is running out for those sites. But, there have been… https://t.co/zQ6cjpTJoW

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) April 1, 2024

So many stories like this, it’s heart breaking to read💔 https://t.co/1ZCUFZQ40w

— Niche Site Lady (@NicheSiteLady) March 31, 2024

@searchliaison @dannysullivan @JohnMu A few years ago I traveled to Peru and wrote the first guide for Huchuy Picchu, which was a newly opened hike at that time.

My blog post ranked #1 on Google for years, which makes sense, because I did the hike myself and other Peru websites… pic.twitter.com/454zAgGnXT

— The World Travel Guy (@aworldtravelguy) March 30, 2024

I saw a dude the other day that’s been travelling non stop for 9 years. He’s been documenting it the whole time, it’s his passion… real images, real experiences.

He no longer has a business because Reddit is now a more reliable source than him.

But yeah, his fault.

— Matt (@hodsonated) March 30, 2024

About a decade ago I started talking about websites becoming nothing more than data inputs for what I coined as a "Task Completion Engine". This new SGE feature for travel is really close to that and hints that this future is right around the corner – if consumers adopt it.

The…

— Joe Youngblood (@YoungbloodJoe) March 27, 2024

See, this is why I can’t take Google’s guidance seriously. On one hand, you’ve got the Liaison account giving us vague unproven advice & sending us down all these different rabbit holes, all while shaming us for not being helpful enough…Meanwhile, Google is systematically… https://t.co/gxATuH4bHr

— Jon Miksis – Global Viewpoint (@JonMiksis) March 27, 2024

I'm trying to keep it humorous because it's the only way to keep from crying these days. But it's just evil what Google is doing, though. Like a vampire sucking the last blood out of the open web.https://t.co/rPhvWHZPJS

— Nate Hake (@natejhake) March 27, 2024

I’ve spent weeks studying Google’s updates and the fallout trying to get a handle on it.

The only conclusion I can come up with is that it appears there’s an unwritten set of Google Web publishing guidelines for a subset of Web publishers. I set out what I believe those to be…

— Fat Stacks ®️ (@FatStacksBlog) March 26, 2024

If both Raptive and Mediavine – aka the biggest ad publishers out there – both lower their requirements to join, isn’t that the biggest sign?!

In my eyes that just means “Google f*cked up so many sites we have to lower requirements or we’re doomed”

What do you think?

— Simone de Vlaming (@simonedevlaming) March 1, 2024

I don't see people talking about this: But I think something with the last 12 months of Google updates has made domain migrations *much* more risky.

I have seen several examples of pretty good technical migrations in last few months that have bombed traffic.

— Mark Williams-Cook (@thetafferboy) April 24, 2024

It's been 7 months, and there hasn't been a single documented recovery from the Google Helpful Content Update.

— Mike Futia (@mikefutia) April 26, 2024

And there it is. The last nail in the coffin for many of us. ☠️

No transparency, no help, no heart.

It’s now pay to win. Welcome to the future of Google Search. 🫡 https://t.co/5DnL5WiDKb

— Brandon Saltalamacchia (@iambrandonsalt) April 27, 2024

We need to stop allowing Google to set the nomenclature.

They didn't reduce "unhelpful" content.

They picked winners and losers.

They reduced the visibility of sites they didn't like in favour of sites that they approve of.

Nothing to do with "helpfulness".

— Sean Kaye (@SeanDoesLife) April 28, 2024

Ok, this is getting pretty ridiculous – the HCU classifier is so brutal that Google will go so far as to attribute his original photos to spam sites instead of just sending the clicks to his domain https://t.co/OSivHH0lOa

— Nate Hake (@natejhake) May 2, 2024

The standard is so low now that after 7 months of gaslighting, if the Google Search Liaison tweets a well-worded tweet, the entire community applauds for waffle. We've reached the trauma bonding phase.

— Daniel Hart (@Okayy_Dan) May 13, 2024

Just ran the visibility numbers for 382 sites impacted heavily by the Sep HCU(X) for the heck of it… Nope, no changes there. Not like I was expecting that yet, but wanted to check based on the latest volatility. If we do see movement there, it will probably be with the next… https://t.co/k8ZBQPsGgS

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) June 2, 2024

There is currently 4x Reddit, 1x Quora, and a Mercedes Forum (yes, the car) ranking on “best online casinos.”

[insert this is fine dog fire meme]

— SEOwner (@tehseowner) May 9, 2024

pic.twitter.com/s5dO1Byje6

— Tim Marston – South Lakes SEO (@southlakesseo) May 8, 2024

In case anyone was wondering, this AI-written travel "blog" is still ranks #1 for loads of travel safety keywords

hElPfUl CoNtEnT https://t.co/6yFN1lZqQs

— Nate Hake (@natejhake) May 1, 2024

Google in 2018: All medical content should be written by experts, preferably doctors, nutrionists etc.

Google in 2024: Let’s rank Reddit with answers from BobLovesCats232 on the internet for medical search queries!

— Gareth Boyd (@garethaboyd) May 1, 2024

Google in 2024 pic.twitter.com/B7GfcBW4hp

— Nate Hake (@natejhake) May 8, 2024

Controversial opinion:

You're not good enough as an SEO if you've never been penalized by Google (manually or algorithmically).

If you've never been hit hard, you don't have a tremendous amount of experience and wisdom that only those who have been hit have.

— Mike Blazer (@MikeBlazerX) April 24, 2024

To recap: Google thinks your content is too bad to rank highly but perfect for scraping with SGE and dishing up in what they know is a no-click answer format.

Scum. https://t.co/GMtOgiJV2s

— Katie Berry 🤦🏻‍♀️ (@thatkatieberry) April 27, 2024

pic.twitter.com/qa3UB1vWb6

— Jacky Chou (buying online businesses up to $1m) (@indexsy) April 30, 2024

Prabhakar Raghavan, current head of Google Search, previously "led" Yahoo Search from 2005-2012.

When he took over, Yahoo Search had 30%+ of the search engine market, second only to Google. By the time he left that dominance had dwindled down to just 13%.

Google was so… pic.twitter.com/1gIXWC8rro

— Mike (Niche Twins) 🏴‍☠️ (@NicheDown) April 25, 2024

I wonder..

If Google scraped all the travel sites for content..

And is now using that content (illegally)..

And has nuked all the travel sites..

What will Google do when it needs updated information?

— Eric • SERP Insider (@serpinsider) March 29, 2024

Saw this on LinkedIn 😂😂😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/fcQGsfVBZI

— Suganthan Mohanadasan (@Suganthanmn) April 8, 2024

Killed by Google pic.twitter.com/Ynmn1YV9nE

— Mike Blazer (@MikeBlazerX) April 16, 2024

Your content isn’t HeLpFuL enough for us to rank it any higher than position 17 but we’ll happily steal it and use it for SGE 🤡💦

— Google Search Parody (@googlehonesty) April 20, 2024

On second thoughts, I don't believe Google were stupid enough to not think ahead and realize that the outcome of HCUs would be worse SERPs. I don't think improving SERPs or "helpful content" was their actual goal. I think their real goal was to purge ALL smaller publishers. https://t.co/RyyukNUN3r

— SEO Renegade (@seorenegade2024) April 20, 2024

At Google we are perfect and flawless and can do no wrong. It could NEVER be that our algorithm is wrong; it's always that publisher's content isn't "helpful". Fix your content, make it "helpful" (you have to guess what we mean by this). Criticism is verboten. We are perfect

— SEO Renegade (@seorenegade2024) April 19, 2024

Here's some positive news for people that got hit by HCU 😍 pic.twitter.com/9lANX5uY2j

— Kasra Dash 💰 (@Kasra_Dash) April 24, 2024

Google is now the Boeing of search engines

When the money people took over the engineers who only wanted to build a good product, the story was always going to be juicing profits at the cost of quality

— Cyrus SEO (@CyrusShepard) April 28, 2024

Found a travel site doing super well since Google's updates!

🙃 pic.twitter.com/1WfQn9BOGg

— Ian (@keywordian) March 14, 2024

Reddit and Quora are – once again – flying off the charts with this update. pic.twitter.com/WvPvk5G1cF

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) April 2, 2024

Interesting to see the surge in traffic to this forum site, where most content is 10+ years old, and it's not seasonal.

This follows a similar pattern to many other forum/UGC sites in the last few months. pic.twitter.com/dWf6ha7MFX

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) April 28, 2024

Just got a new manual action from Google for unnatural links. 🙄

They can fuck right off.

They haven't replied to my review request from a penalty 6 months ago, so why would I even try to fix this one? pic.twitter.com/PwjzvtuuoE

— Niche Site Lady (@NicheSiteLady) August 15, 2024

Fucksake. Two of my sites hit. One absolutely did not deserve it. Pretty obvious they've been rooting through my GSC looking for targets. ☹️

I thought that keeping your sites separate was only needed for black hats. Not so. My mistake. pic.twitter.com/yp0XRG7mQH

— Niche Site Lady (@NicheSiteLady) March 8, 2024

Google Search by themselves are largely destroying the public's perception of LLMs. pic.twitter.com/7Q1ZjSG8CS

— Xavier Larrea (@jxlarrea) May 24, 2024

SGE is yum pic.twitter.com/yrUEeFZkvH

— Gary Osburg (@TheTruthfulSEO) May 10, 2024

Props to WaPo for publishing this.

Google is flat-out STEALING content, traffic, and income from web publishers.

"Web publishers brace for carnage as Google adds AI answers" pic.twitter.com/JR6MQ7OBwp

— Mike Futia (@mikefutia) May 13, 2024

Honored to have been featured in a recent Washington Post article discussing changes happening in search & how it’s changing TF2.

What a fun & interesting time to be in the blogging and internet space.

The article 👇👇 pic.twitter.com/kM5ypVsh5c

— Jake Boly | That Fit Friend (@Jake_Boly) May 13, 2024

Don't believe Google's lies about how SGE works – SGE just steals content & summarizes it!

🤥 LIE: At #GoogleIO they just said that SGE "fanned out and combed the web to find relevant insights from articles, forums, videos, and more – and it stitched all of this together in my… pic.twitter.com/ig6KwkpYFN

— Nate Hake (@natejhake) May 14, 2024

Everyone: Google AI overview is going to steal organic clicks!

Google AI Overview: pic.twitter.com/rs06tx5RJs

— Keval Shah | Ecommerce SEO (@SEOKeval) May 15, 2024

Google AI overview suggests adding glue to get cheese to stick to pizza, and it turns out the source is an 11 year old Reddit comment from user F*cksmith 😂 pic.twitter.com/uDPAbsAKeO

— Peter Yang (@petergyang) May 23, 2024

Here's another disturbing health claim that seems to come from a comedy/satire website (edit: or is that from a real website??). pic.twitter.com/GuOj0cnllb

— Joe Youngblood (@YoungbloodJoe) May 23, 2024

Google's new AI overview feature is a disaster.

AI is awesome. Tacking on AI to a product that hundreds of millions use without it working is not.

13 hilarious examples:

— Nathan Lands — Lore.com (@NathanLands) May 24, 2024

Google's new AI search results are having quite the week. Here's a thread with some of my favorite answers: pic.twitter.com/JGl0VlP7qj

— Jeremiah Johnson 🌐 (@JeremiahDJohns) May 26, 2024

Here's the next batch of the list, in case the trend wasn't obvious. https://t.co/oKvOWwtjq5 pic.twitter.com/L1hUT8Nwpe

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) May 3, 2024

pic.twitter.com/wEcYDc6XTo

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) May 3, 2024

Many major publisher sites have seen even further visibility drops since May 5, when Google rolled out the "site reputation abuse" portion of its spam updates.

Several of these sites certainly had/have section that qualify as Google's definition of "site reputation abuse."

But… pic.twitter.com/MSubHny7o7

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) May 20, 2024

In the last 8 months, a massive shift in SEO visibility just took place from thousands of sites in nearly every category to a handful of sites (metric shown is @sistrix visibility index scoring).

Between September '23 to May '24:

– Wikipedia (+ 1,046)
– Reddit (+885)
-… pic.twitter.com/qGK02Y70u9

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) May 6, 2024

Two different things. A site could have an algorithmic spam action. A site could be not ranking well because other systems that *are not about spam* just don't see it as helpful.

I've looked at many sites where people have complained about losing rankings and decide they have a…

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) May 13, 2024

Welcome to another round of “If it’s a conspiracy theory then why did Google destroy evidence?”

Today’s reminder is that even though closing arguments in United States vs. Google have wrapped up, the trial is not necessarily over. If Judge Mehta rules that Google broke the law,…

— Katie Berry 🤦🏻‍♀️ (@thatkatieberry) May 5, 2024

Not sure people saw this, but it's a pretty big development for the many thousands of people who are (rightfully) fixated on Google's communications surrounding the HCU:

"Yes, sites can grow again after being affected by the "HCU" (well, core update now). This isn't permanent.… https://t.co/1CZPn45fGB

— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) May 6, 2024

Hey bloggers – here's how Google itself said you should make money in a 2021 post:

#1) Ads – Google says "like a billboard, the spaces with the most traffic will generate the most revenue."

Oh, and then they give a helpful visual example of a travel blog with an…

— Nate Hake (@natejhake) May 7, 2024

With planning capabilities, you can get help creating plans for whatever you need, starting with meals and vacations. Meal and trip planning are available now in Search Labs in English in the US. Later this year, we’ll add customization capabilities and more categories like…

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) May 14, 2024

Honored to have been featured in a recent Washington Post article discussing changes happening in search & how it’s changing TF2.

What a fun & interesting time to be in the blogging and internet space.

The article 👇👇 pic.twitter.com/kM5ypVsh5c

— Jake Boly | That Fit Friend (@Jake_Boly) May 13, 2024

Interested in the Google data leak? Of course you are. This is pretty cool. Search and filter the data based on several criteria. Just started testing it out but could be helpful for those wanting to dig in further -> The Google Search API Leak: A Comprehensive Database of… pic.twitter.com/EFHAixUIrc

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) June 1, 2024

Those complaining that topical authority doesn't exist are the ones the most affected by HCU destroying their sites because the intent of the keywords they were targeting changed.

If Google wants Reddit/Quora threads, YT videos and EComm – Your niche blog won't rank anymore!

— Charles Floate 📈 (@Charles_SEO) September 29, 2024