Google Is Killing Us (& Other Independent Sites) 

I also want to add a couple of points that I missed in the video that also show how difficult Google are being against small websites: 1.) There's zero support. If anything goes wrong with our rankings or we want to seek advice from a Google rep there's nobody to help us. The last 7 months have been anxiety inducing and even more so that Google just points me to a feedback form regarding how they can make their algorithm changes better? We need someone to talk to, our livelihoods are on the line yet all there is, is a form and a Twitter account that gives incredibly poor advice, and only ever responds with "make better content". If this was any other industry that wiped out a business entirely there would at least be someone there to tell you why, or to atleast help you understand why, but with Google there's nothing. 2.) Small websites had zero heads up that these updates were going to happen, losing search volume hours after it launched, whereas large media companies were giving months notice to clean up their act with the recent reputation abuse update that went live recently. 3.) The internet still needs independent websites. If there's only a few hundred media-company owned websites that survive it will simply become a place of low quality, regurgitated content that creates a depressing eco-system that isn't free and can easily be manipulated, making it an incredibly powerful weapon that shares information. Right now this information is biased towards Google's bottom line and training their AI robots that will remove any unique, new indendent website that dare steps in its way. Google has a duty to make the internet open, and free while allowing their users to explore the open-web without bias. What this comes down to is that we just want Google to be a fair place. Let the best content win, period. Again, thank you so much for your continued support and hopefully Google see's this an understands that there's creatives, and families being supported on these independent websites, removing them not only removes food off of our tables, but removes jobs for talented individuals within our industries. ❤ Want to support us, this is the best way, thank you: www.patreon.com/retrododo

90%?! That's ridiculous. Not to mention, Google search results are useless these days.

Remember when google remove don't be evil from their code of conduct. This is why

The only thing that I've noticed about Google is that the quality of their search results has fallen to an appallingly bad level over the past 3-4 years. 80% of my search results are just utter crap and have nothing to do with what I want.

We have 4 websites, all 90% down from a year ago. I’m now searching for a job as I can’t afford to continue. Thanks Google.

Google is becoming increasingly more annoying and morally moving further away from where they started.

Just changed from Google to Duck duck go, typed "retro handheld console" and first result was retro dodo. Fuck all these greedy companies. We support you. Congratulations on being a father!😊

As someone who works for another, bird-themed gaming website, these changes have been catastrophic for us too. It's utterly demoralising. Google doesn't know what they're talking about with regards to "helpful content", because Retro Dodo's content has been massively helpful to me when writing lists, hahaha! Side note: those display cases look like they'd be sick.

Google is now only about short term gain and revenue. Many people are using Bing for searches nowadays as Google is basically a forum search engine. Led by the same person who single-handedly crashed Yahoo, Google was like Yahoo in its last days. Pretty sad to see how low Google have fallen

"Google don't be evil"

Thanks for speaking up! I'm in the same boat as you. Dedicated the last half-decade and my entire adult working life to creating honest, data-driven content around micro-mobility. Thousands of hours of effort effectively demolished overnight by Google. The most infuriating thing is that the results that have replaced me (and my likeminded competitors) are poor-quality, barely scratch the surface and sometimes with outright dangerous recommendations. Google is not giving small creators like us ANYTHING to work with (but they'll happily communicate with, and give time to big media corps that are obviously abusing their authority at the expense of consumers).

Same with my local digital magazine, once receiving 1000+ visitas a day, mostly from Google, now not even 10. Without warnings. So, don't be evil, evil.

Thanks for speaking on this. As someone managing a small business' site, I've seen traffic drop to near zero. Now, I need to push more into social media channels for traffic, which feels impossible at the moment.

If a webpage was made for advertising, sprinkled with just a few popular info was a way to attract users, then it wouldn't be fair calling it a search engine. Google is an advertisement company that happens to serve interesting info every now and then

Seems to me like the most immediate fix to this issue is for independent sites/publishers to create their own sub-reddit and post not just links to articles in that sub, but also a relevant text snippet from the article in the post. That would feed into Google's love for Reddit perfectly and drive traffic back to the independent publisher's website. Basically turn Reddit into a middle-man between Google and your site.

Google search has been becoming worse and worse over the past year or so. The guy that is charge of it is Prabhakar Raghavan. Previously he was head of Yahoo search and destroyed it...

Hey, I am an independent creator as well and my magazine got basically killed after being boosted by the last HCU. I always put a lot of effort into researching my information to be a reliable source. My rankings have been replaced with nonsense AI generated babble. It's heartbreaking and I kinda don't want to give up on the site but if google does not want to list helpful content, I don't want to cater towards WHAT they want to push forward.

It's distressing how many creators I have seen in the last few months in similar situations.

Brandon, thank you deeply for sharing this incredibly important message. As a reader/viewer and one of the owners of an independent video games website in Brazil, I feel a profound sense of empathy. I'm sorry that we have to face times like this. Let's remain hopeful for the future, but more importantly, I wish you, your family, and the entire team at Retro Dodo nothing but health, prosperity, and peace. Take care.

Yep. Right there with you. I lost over 90% of my traffic over the last calendar year as well. I was making just shy of $20,000 from my blog per year for a few years straight and I've made $1,600 from the last calendar year. It's such a gut punch.

This is why I use Bing. Too many scam ads on Google, Gmail, RU-vid, etc 🤦🏼‍♂️

SEO has been an absolute disaster for the internet

Thank you for making this video! We have also been affected by the March update and have been gradually losing traffic. From March until today, we have lost over 70% of our traffic. And even though Google says the March update was completed on April 19, our traffic continues to go down to this day. I hope sense prevails and Google stops killing small and independent sites as it is not doing its users any favors.

Yep. Same here. Our site is down to 10% of what it once was. My biggest mistake was not just making Reddit 2.

Thank you for speaking up. My site lost 90% of traffic too.

I didn't know a lot of this, but BOY can you feel it.... I use the Google Discover home screen widget to pick up news articles, and the articles keep getting worse and worse. Stuff coming up on the feed that is clearly written by AI, articles that go nowhere, clearly rehashed content, poorly edited content (lots of spelling and grammar mistakes), and foreign farmed content that feels like all of the above. What's worse is it takes a bit of reading to realize what I've gotten into, and it literally steals my time in the process. Thanks for posting this, it was super informative. I don't know what solutions look like, but the first step is knowing the problem.

You are not the only one to say that. It's many websites and livelihoods that have been impacted. It's horrible and ruthless.

Reddit is ranking so well because people keep on adding reddit to the end of their queries. The reason why they do that is because years ago search results were dominated by affiliate link blogs and people trusted reddit more. Generally, very niche subreddits are actually pretty good at giving you impartial advice. Having said that, enshitification is a real thing and I'm becoming more frustrated with Google as a user and a marketer.

Same thing here. Our website lost ~80% of its traffic over the past 6 months. We’re getting outranked by completely irrelevant pages as long as they’re from spammy legacy media websites. It’s a very stressful position to be in. Results are now just ads and completely irrelevant resources that do not fit the search intent.

What I think is happening is a generational shift in where people get their content online. I say this as someone who grew up on the internet in the 90s but we may need to admit that traditional websites are not where you can build a following or monetize anymore. Yes, Google is squeezing everyone. The average person doesn't make their own website anymore unless it's for a service, and even then, everything is done through phones, so most businesses would opt to focus on a mobile app, not a traditional website. Being a content creator, Tik Tok and short-form videos reign supreme, and from there, you can redirect to an independent website if nothing else but to have full control of your presentation, but everyone in the world is on 5 websites, statistics have shown that Gen Z just use Tik Tok to search for stuff now. We can complain yes, and I do all the time, but I realized you have to adapt or die as a business owner on the internet.

Great honest video. Very accurate too with some good info. A fellow site owner here who has also lost 80/90 percent of the traffic all in the march update. Rank 1 for some posts now ranking 40/50, it's crazy.

It's an unfortunate state of affairs when content is king so much that it doesn't matter that the content mill churns out inaccurate and uninspired pieces, while the insightful and thoughtfully put together ones who actually do real hands-on research and form their own opinions not regurgitated and mashed-up from other resources are pushed to the bottom of the pile.

Hi Brandon, my probably unpopular opinion: I am a subscriber since the SALT days, and I liked your content better when it was actually just you. I select the content that I consume mainly based on the people behind it, and your particular style of speaking and reviewing appeals to me. When Retro Dodo grew as a brand, I saw less and less of your personality and more contributions of others. While all of them are nice guys, it's not what I'm specifically looking for. That being said: I'm still here and I wish you and the boys the best of luck in these hard times!

Great video - Well done for saying your piece. As a company in the UK that helps and supports small site / affiliate site owners and publishers, its now having a massive knock on effect to us as well. Its gonna be a rocky few months. Keep up the great work!

All independent sites should always build an opt-in email list. It reminds them to visit your site and is a great way to reach out. And everyone should always be talking about alternatives to Google.

As a father, this couldn't come at a worst time. I know these are hard times and business is always on our minds,but we only get the experience of watching our kids grow once. Try not to neglect that, while we are all trying to save our businesses here. Best of luck.

My company have also become victims of this. And we can't be considered independent. So if we got hit, anyone can get hit. We've done our best to play by their rules but we still got hit. Google's monopoly is an issue.

All these corporations swore up and down that their monopolies wouldn’t negatively impact the little guy. We all knew it was ultimately bullshit, didn’t we?

Your video made me change my default search engine from Google to Ecosia. I didn't like the Google search results over the past couple of months and thanks to your video I now. understand why. Ecosias search results feel more like the Google of 3-5 years ago. You're ranking pretty well on there. Also, Ecosia puts their revenue from ads towards planting trees, which is a nice bonus.

Hi. I found you over RU-vid a few years ago and from there your website. I love your content and videos and it is always fun to read your articels. I am sorry to hear that the situation is so bad with google and I hope you find a way through this. Good luck and stay strong. Greetings from Germany

Thanks for speaking up about this! I'm also in the same boat. I have almost 20 years experience in my niche, with first-hand product testing, and real world expertise, aiming to create the most helpful content I possibly can. Now misinformed advice from Reddit and forum threads dominate the SERPs.

Aw, man. I'm sorry you're going through this. I've been feeling the pinch with my site, too. It's rough. I really hope you're able to weather this. You mentioned that Detailed report. I took Glenn's SEO course, and I think he mentioned you guys as an example of a great site with beautiful design that was succeeding.

Where is Google going to steal content from when they've killed off all the websites?

Relying on a platform where you don't have control makes your business a hostage to fortune. I recall hearing that advice years ago. So true

This sucks for small sites just trying to make it but people in the tech & securities section have been warning everyone about letting Google pretty much "own" the Internet. The only way to stop this is don't use Chrome or any app that is associated with Google but at this point it's near impossible.

Exactly the same thing has happened to my small independent website, Small Screen. Dropped about 90% in traffic. Had to let people go. It’s basically over for independent sites. It’s devastating.

I'll support RetroDodo. I'll not be going to the meet up as I'm from Chile, but I really love the site and the videos. The RetroDodo channel has introduced me to the world of retro handhelds that I've been enjoyed SO much and I'll be grateful for it always. Keep up the good work! You guys have a fan from really far away!

I know exactly where you're coming from. I've been the primary admin on a couple of music news related sites since 2008 and we've been squashed to basically nothing. Down to a two person team as well. I feel this.

Sorry to hear mate :( Have been toying with thought of getting going with a blog site, but man what an uphill battle they have made it. Love the content and will continue supporting the brand anyway i can!

Congratulations on your new family mate. You have a smart head on your shoulders so whatever happens you will succeed I think. Google sucks, but it is more or less beyond reproach to anyone so it’s a necessary evil.

I manage a website for a small business too, and keeping on top of SEO/SEM stuff with Google and AWS is near impossible.

I find RU-vid and Reddit are always at the top of whatever i search on google now. Everything, everywhere all at once, as long as google own a slice of it or theyre being paid Admittedly if i find i want to know how to do something i often search in youtube, youtube shorts or tiktok

Your dedication is commendable. Being a new father on top of that. I noticed these past few years that searching on Google isn’t what it used to be. I don’t find “real” answers to my questions. I have to scroll many pages down and usually give up on my search.. I think all your new ideas are great!

Thanks for the video. We are in the same boat as you, best of luck. Hopefully, we can all navigate and pivot through this.

Maaaate. Mate! We've all missed you. First of all: Congrats on having a (very cute) baby. Kids are awesome. Secondly: Your YT channel has been one of my favourites for quite some time. I've found your reviews to be critical and informative with sound reasoning behind your opinions. I haven't always agreed with those opinions, but that's the whole point. Keep up the amazing work, if you can. Plenty of people love your content!!!

The other day I can't even find Southwest airline booking site for a few minutes

It's been unfair for years, and it will continue to get worse.

So True, I have similar clients that really was helping people but now their traffic dropped 70% and still continues...

For years I thought review videos was a hobby, not a career. Your skill set could easily land you a real job with salary. You can continue to have side projects while supporting the family. Wish you the best of luck and hopefully great decisions moving forward ❤

I really hope someday you all come together and sue the sh*t out of these A-holes. They're STEALING creators content and taking all the credit. And for a beginning youtuber who wants to make my channel fun and full of information, it's WORSE on us! I was legit starting to get up to thousands of views, and then recently a few months ago, it just stopped completely! I'm lucky enough to even make a 100 views on a video now. Like, wtf man! This is B.S!!

I've been following this on Twitter and I still can't believe this has happened, it's devastating. I hope Retro Dodo and all of the small businesses affected by this are able to get help and turn this around.

I really like your videos, and I started my journey in retrogaming and emulation thanks to you and your website. I am without an income at the moment, but I will consider to subscribe to your Patreon soon (I also would like to buy your books). I will be here, as a member of a community you built :)

I'm so sorry, Brandon. I've loved and supported you guys over the years and I hope you'll be here for many years to follow. May God bless you and your family, Don't let them destroy your life's work. Keep going.

it will be worse-all Internet without any people, just swarms of bots, OpenAi (which asking feds to stop selling people GPUs) soon starts search engine and many others too, no human will visit any pages they will sent agents or bots to summarise

The state of Google search is absolutely terrible. Everyone started tacking "reddit" on the ends of searches because you wanted results from a genuine person that knows the subject or has had experience with whatever you're looking for. If you didn't, then you'd get "Top 10" lists from content farms that read much more like 10 separate advertisements than a ranking of "Here's the best all-rounder, here's the budget option, here's the premium option." Now, rather than elevating the voices of experts like yourselves, we just get reddit results as the default. Sometimes that's good, but sometimes it's just an echo chamber of popular opinion. Anyway, you've got a like and subscribe from me. Looking forward to the Retroad Show.

I'm sorry to hear that things are so rough right now. I hope that you will be able to pivot Retro Dodo in a way that allows this to still be a viable way for you to create cool stuff, help people, and provide for your family.

Hey Brandon, I can relate to your frustration! Thanks for sharing our post with your audience. Thanks for being open and honest and I do hope this will get better. But agree with you that we need to makes plans assuming it won’t change 😢

keep doing what your doing and more if you can, some of your videos are why i got back into classics through emulation, got into launchbox and have a gpd win max 2021 and win3 so i can play all my fave childhood handheld and console classics aswell as modern stuff. Always epic content

Enjoyed the video despite the tragic reasons for it. Our own Retrogames website is really old, it went live in 1998, and for decades that has been enough to keep us high in the google rankings, but over the past year or so we have seen significantly less new visitors from google, I thought it was all down to our own shoddy SEO, but thanks to you and this video I now see it is a much bigger problem. At least your YT is growing, maybe that can fill some of the gap. I came to YT late, two and a half years and 250 videos later, and I can barely scrape 500 views, despite spending 15 hours a week making great content. I guess this is what happens when huge companies like google control so many pies, it’s not in their interest to support the small sites and channels when they can profit far more easily from the few they allow to prosper. It’s time for new gatekeepers, but sadly that horse bolted long ago.

This is such an interesting video, coming from an SEO RU-vidr, this is a great perspective. Thanks.

Branch out into TikTok, Shorts, and push the patreon more. Maybe start a podcast or something. I'm rooting for you and your team. Love your content and I hope y'all don't fade out because of this.

Congratulations from Spain. My site after 10 years was hit and my web literally buried. Not fare

Google have been going against their own guide lines for years. I used to work doing google adwords for clients of the non profit bent and got into numerous arguments with googles re their decisions. I would often quote their own documentation to them to no avail. They'd ignore their own documentation when it doesn't suit them.

God bless u and your family Brandon!!! Hope everything ends well with this problem. We will keep supporting you!!! ❤

Google has been broken for years. And now its really really broken. I feel the search experience is actually worse now... They are on their way out. In 5 years Google will not be the lead in search I'm sorry this has happened to you my friend.

Here's a product idea: Retro game album zip binders. Let me elaborate: I have quite a few retro games. But I don't really care about displaying them on shelves. I much prefer a minimalist interieur design. So for probably more than a year I was looking for nice ways to store my game cartridges safely and without taking up too much space. What I came up with is putting them into an album, similar to trading cards. In fact, Game Boy (Color) games fit neatly into trading card album pages. DS and 3DS games fit very nicely into the sleeves of coin album pages. And PSP games fit very well into medal album pages. To protect everything from dust I'm using zip binders. Overall I am very happy with this solution. However, it took me a lot of time searching and comparing online and even more of trial and error to find the right products. Also everything is being sold separately. I would have loved to just have one website where I could have ordered the zip binders already equipped with the correct sleeve pages. Ideally even with a coherent binder design and nice little icons for each system on the binders' backs so that I know which system is in which binder. Also I still have not found the perfect solution for GBA games yet. Currently I'm stacking 2 above each other in trading card album pages. But this way I always have to take out the top one to reach the one at the bottom of each sleeve. I could imagine that, as people get older and have families and no longer fill shelves with their game collection, but still don't want to part with their gane collection, the demand for storage solutions like this might rise.

I will continue to support this channel. changed my search engine now will try duck duck go.

You seem like a damn good guy, and I'm glad I've found your channel. Subscribed.

It's good to learn that you are creating new plans. This might get you back even stronger! We're rooting for you.

I have moved from Google to Duck for a few years now. And I don't miss anything about it.

Just backed you on Patreon. Keep at it. 💪

Thanks for making this video. I am one of those affected by the helpful content update. My website is entirely hand written, user engagement continuously improving and then bammm, organic traffic dropped by 90%.

Sorry to hear that, hope you'll find a way to turn things around.

Been following you for years now. You have a wonderful community built-up. So informative and inspiring. Unfortunate to hear this news 😕 I hope you all can keep going strong in other media 🙏

People are moving away from Google to other search engines slowly but surely. I ran some scientific tests on quality of results and Google is unbelievably weak. There have been multiple search queries where the correct output to the query is in top 3 on bing and not even in top 50 on Google. Instead of the expected query results on Google you oftenly get random unrelated giant corporations and also unrelated reddit threads. This is without taking ads into consideration. When factoring in ads Google is practically unusable in 2024.

Thanks for speaking on this!

man congrats on being a father bro!! thats huge, little man has no idea his pops has over a quarter million subs and growing!!! it'll blow his mind later on haha. keep it up man, speak up and make things known, that's the only way a difference can be made, we all love your vids man

It's a shame. That the independent smaller businesses are being effected so much by Google's greed.

I love your content, I really hope you can overcome this moment, I wish you lots of luck and success.

I’ve also been running my own website for five years, and Google has also decimated our traffic and revenue. Thanks to Patreon (and focussing more on RU-vid), I’ve been able to keep going, just about. I have 40K subs and talk about a niche with low revenue, but my patrons allow me to push forward. Community is now everything.

It’s a nail in the coffin for my Google use. It’s weird, but I’m shifting back to the way I used to surf in the 90s. AI content and Google being so useless has taken something good and trashed it. I feel like the only alternative is to find a way to “abandon” Google as a service, and move to more decentralized web experiences

Just as a general note also for you. I don't remember where I heard it but I remember that there was a recent bias push from google to derank potential click farms. Things like listicals, review publications and blog feeds have been punished in the seo rankings due to the recent arrival of AI spam to advertise a product rather than be informative. This is also a factor where for example reddit has been boosted because of the increase in people tagging search results as + reddit. Given the content on your website, it may be a contributing factor.

You can start thinking outside the box. Host retro-game competitions online, with sponsorships, prizes for winners, look at options for hosting or posting live retro gaming.

Yep, search results are junk, and they abandoned everyone for the dollar-the people who built and supported them. It's time for a change, and hopefully, someone will step up to bring in a better search with this opportunity. I wish Bing would take advantage of this, but they can't steer their own ship or have the know-how to do it.

Great content! This is the situation of all independent small publishers. Let's hope this time will change.

Sorry to hear all that.

Genuinely curious - do Google search results include relevant RU-vid videos connected to independent sites? Is this a way to generate traffic?

You've built a great brand with lots of trustworthy, great content! Google is showing the middle finger to the open net (the one we thought of back in the 90's) and their search results now are just horseshit. And don't sell out the brand!

Just to add to this Ai is the major killer not just google bing and Open ai are contributing hugely, i hope we survive this wave

It's very unfortunate this is happening. It seems that in terms of smaller sites, Google prefers sites with user engagement and goal completion. A website that depends on ads for revenue and may send users away to other sites like Amazon for the purchase would score much lower in terms of this. I would think either offering products directly for sale and/or utilizing social media ads such as Facebook to promote posts would be a effective strategy. That way you could still show ads to monetize the site without worry of search rankings.