At the beginning of 2024, we said Google was killing independent sites with its bias towards established media outlets, even in cases where these trus

How to find helpful content in a sea of made-for-Google BS

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2024-10-18 19:30:03

At the beginning of 2024, we said Google was killing independent sites with its bias towards established media outlets, even in cases where these trusted publications were publishing crap AI content.

Three months later, we shared how Google’s March 2024 algorithm update had finished the job by taking away 90% of search traffic to HouseFresh, with spammed Reddit threads and old Quora posts drowning our pages in search results.

In August 2024, Google rolled out another update to its algorithm that benefited some independent web publishers like HouseFresh while nuking countless others out of Googlexistence.

This is the trade-off with every algorithm update: Some sites win while other sites lose. On the surface, you might think there is a balance in this trade-off. Unfortunately, the balance has been broken by the sea of bad actors taking advantage of the fact that Google’s algorithm is reaching peak enshittification.

It has become clear that a large percentage of those consistently winning in Google Search are doing so through a mix of brand popularity signals, vast amounts of content and various forms of spammy and deceitful practices.