Google has announced its biggest and only core update for 2024 so far. Will this fix the websites hit by the HCU update? Will our Google rankings and traffic come back? Let's wait and see status.search....
pretty good chance they've gone after the SEO gurus by destroying all of the case study sites and in turn, their business models - looks like carnage out there. I've not seen one guru in the space not get smashed in the last 12 months, and this looks like the final nail in the coffin of review and hobby blogs along with niche sites. -
I think there’s potential in niche sites still but maybe not in written low competition keywords and general keyword content. We just have to rethink our strategy
Seeing some on the r/SEO thread saying they got hit with a manual pently, despite their site being nearly all original content (minimal AI). If that's true, that's worrisome.
I see some of my articles are being outranked by Quora, Reddit and a tool website, even though my articles are written by human and are of high quality. It’s very painful to see low quality content outranking high quality content.
I'm very worried... I have a feeling it might make things worse for those already affected but I'll try and be optimistic and hope that this is the start of an uptick in traffic for us all!
I don't think anything of it and see what happens. I just keep doing what I'm doing and that's focusing on my visitors and not so much on ranking number 1 or 2.
Thanks for the update Carl. I knew it was on the cards but didn't know it started yesterday. Like most of us, I'm really hoping for some Google love this time around. I know website creators can look at their sites with rose tinted spectacles but I really feel that my content is a real help to users wanting to start this particular hobby......I have my fingers crossed!
A lot of sites that are good and helpful will get caught in the crossfire unfortunately. I've been distracted with the Amazon Influencer program for a few weeks so it's been less stressful for me compared to the Sept HCU update
I've just sold my site. Even if it goes back, which I don't think it will, I won't go back to the top. Google seems to be ranking my main competitor top now, which is fair, so I'll end up 3rd or 4th I think. Even when I was ranking top my earnings were crap even before HCU. My niche is tiny, it saw a boom over lockdown but I had nothing to compare it to so thought that was normal but in reality, the traffic I was getting post covid seems to be normal and it's minimal. I'm out of the blogging game now. Working on some thing that AI can't get to. 🤞
I think the direction is to have a product to sell, even with an affiliate website and a mailing list. Even if my site gets back up the trust is gone. They can ruin you overnight.
