HCU and ongoing core updates. How do you improve and restore?

[Whitey]

I get it that there's a world of pain, anger and despair out there that has hit a lot of business. I really do and i wish folks well in getting out of it.

But let's not have a thread on complaints and mis-managed serp results, nor the vagueness of guidance from Google or it's unfairness. Let's rise above that.

Rather, I'd encourage folks to make some objective contributions to help site owners reverse out of the existing mess and/or future proof their sites, perhaps self evaluating what they did that was sub par and what they will do to make things better. I am building a list based on my personal observations of site's I monitor, including our own (2x ccTLD's are now zero) and have seen, inputs from respected SEO's and general comments from within WebmasterWorld.

Looking forward to some positive discussions. Fingers crossed.

So maybe you guys could kick off some objective "do's" and "do-nots", what you've seen and experienced and share what you think you might be doing to future proof as best you can.

[adman]

If people knew what to do (including myself), they wouldn't complain.

[Whitey]

@adman

If people knew what to do (including myself), they wouldn't complain

If you don't know, a good start would be to engage with some trusted friends, SEO's and PM some WebmasterWorld members to get objective feedback on your website/s. That said, contribution isn't one way, so if you could do the same for others, you might start to gain better insight and perspective to your own issues. Good luck.

[seokees]

Well to kick it off, my experiences.

1. I have got two relatively larger sites (one with links, one a few links) that generate (normally) the lion share of my income. Unfortunately, it has the same trends/decline as a lot of smaller / midsize sites. September/Oct drop, a little stability and another drop in March. Poored a lot of energy to keep it up-to-date, made it more helpful (before HCU update as well, not cause of the update but to make the site better for the visitors).

2. I have got two really small sites (10 pages/one with some links, 20 / one with no real links). Here is the kicker. They grew from the Sept update and stabalized during the last months, no impact in March. The articles are fine, but not that up-to-date. Especially the older posts (that really need an update if you look at it from a rational point of view) jumped in the SERPS.

3. All my sites are in leadgen and with some affiliate. Both the sites that dropped and increased have roughly the same structure.

It feels random. The only thing I can distill from this is, as something of a conspiracy that the smaller sites are not a threat to Google and are not throttled. They have not the up and down visibility and not the days without conversions, or periods with no visitors.

[londrum]

I think we're better off focusing all our time on off-page stuff, building up an email list, social media, adding an ebook if you can, etc.
we need to forget google for the time being until they sort themselves out.

I think the reason a lot of us are losing traffic is not because of anything we did, or can change, but because off all the PAA boxes, ads, videos and carousels that google are inserting into the SERPs, not to mention all the reddit and spam stuff thats ranking above us now.
Its impossible to oust all of that, no matter how many changes we make
I cant see how rewriting titles, adding ALT text and subheadings and internal links and all of that is going to make any difference

DONT -- making onpage changes, and blasting out lots of new content probably won't help
DO -- focus on building up traffic streams outside of google

[Micha]

This is actually a good idea, but there are several problems. What helps with one website does not automatically help with another website, every "case" is different. In addition, it takes a very long time for an effect to be measurable on Google, and how can you actually assess the quality? If I find an article helpful, that doesn't mean that Google does, and nobody knows exactly which factors Google evaluates.

The only tip I can think of is to declutter the website, revise or delete old articles and tidy up the menu.

[Whitey]

Time for a look in the mirror perhaps, with a few more thoughts to share, prompted by this quick overview. The initial feedback's just starting to come in. It's worth a quick read:

Lily Ray wrote: I hate to say this, but my 30+ person SEO team and I just went through several examples of sites that claim to have super helpful content and were hit unfairly by the HCU.

The consensus? A lot of the content on these sites was found to be... pretty unhelpful.

I am not saying this situation is true for every site, but I think it's really important to remember that just because you think your content is helpful does not always imply that the majority of your readers do. [twitter.com...]

[Micha]

I also read this and I agree with what she writes. But how do I assess whether an article of mine is helpful or not? For example, I have a news website, so at what point is news helpful? I have to state and explain facts, but that's all I can do. And it's websites like this that are particularly affected by the fact that Google considers large sites to be more important. They do the same as small websites, but they automatically rank better. It's different with a blog, for example, where there is a lot of potential that can be exploited.

That's why it's important to check whether you fit into the scheme that most SEOs talk about.

[RedBar]

my 30+ person SEO team and I

Hmmm, 14 years "SEO" dealing with like-minded NYC wannabes?

[Whitey]

There’s a recently published article by @martinibuster at SEJ citing a video by Gary Illyes at Google.

Does anyone see anything worth noting for core update revival or content upgrading?

Gary begins the presentation by emphasizing that the goal in search is to provide results with webpages that are high quality, trustworthy and are relevant [searchenginejournal.com...]

Gary Illyes @ Google [youtu.be...]

[phranque]

the goal in search is to provide results with webpages that are high quality, trustworthy and are relevant

"same as it ever was"

[Whitey]

So what I think I’m observing based on a number of affected sites and conversations with some SEOs about content and HCU includes this:

1/ Google defines your site as being about a core topic.
2/ it backs this up with brand identity and matching content authority recognition. Content without authority can be vulnerable, even if unique.
3/ if content articles go too broad without strong internal and external semantic relationship signals ( mostly links) and/or schema G can get confused and expunge those results. I believe external links with a semantic relationship may be helpful. eg known SEOs supporting other SEO’s articles

Some big sites I looked at had this problem and their SEO staff are working on these things already, bearing in mind the initial drops started in September and have continued.

Suggestion would be to no-index or remove these pages, then modify and reintroduce them slowly if all criteria is met (long and costly process for some).
4/ Sites that do not add value and are largely repetitive to others in a category vertical or duplicate to closely owned sets e.g regional ccTLDs with minor variances may be effected
5/ Ad heavy sites that inhibit the user experience
6/ Pure AI content is risky IMO and G can or will be preparing for it’s own outputs, so doesn’t need a massive influx from the web in the interim
7/ G wants well structured factual unique data that demonstrates demand with user engagement to feed its future AI / SGE / LLM modeling.

There may be a multitude of circumstances and observations that I haven’t covered, also many may add or disagree with these views, especially as I don’t know for sure.

Any thought or perspectives on what you think you see? It would be helpful to know WebmasterWorld members thoughts.

[seokees]

What I can see from the comments in SEO forums between the rightfully complaining ones (I am in the same mood), I think I am going to use another strategy. I have got a few really small sites, that were not really hit and even thrived a litte. These small sites aren't that different from the bigger sites (links and all the whistles) which I poured my heart and soul into it. The only difference I can see is the topic. The smaller sites are more clear what they're about. They have got not really great links btw.

My plan is as follows:

1. New site, new IP, new SGC. Take a topic from my big site. Take the scoring keywords and create blogs with a more personal feel. Keep the site reatively small. No AI writer, it takes more time to fact-check and humanise than it is a timesaver.
2. Take another topic, and copy the same strategy as point 1. And so and so on.
3. I will keep the bigger old sites for what it is for the foreseeable future, keep it up-to-date and maybe they will return some better return in future when Google decides to do something different (and maybe more stupid, but by sheer coincident ranks it better again)

[MrSnuts]

Thanks to @Whitey for starting this thread :)
I have been toying with a similar idea, so I'm glad to share some of my recent thinkings with you here.
I'd like to state a few things before I do: To make that clear, I do feel the pain of those being hit harshly, and I am by no means trying to sound patronizing. I'm not a google fanboy either, but -just as the OP suggested- I'm trying to observe the bigger picture without getting stuck in conspiracy theories or emotional outrage... that just won't help. If you look at the mental state of people commenting on Barrys blog, you should realize we are living in a very negative bubble right now, that is dangerous by itself, no matter what google contributes to the mess.
So, take good care of yourselfs out there, and rather keep doing something to keep motivated then slipping into states of hopelessness.

I only run one single website, so nothing I can say is in any way objective.
My site "only" recieves around 450 clicks from google a day - but I manage to make around 2k a month with the site. I started in 2011 and was hit by some google algo update really badly in 2016.
I went thru the pain and got myself back into a "real" job to pay the bills, so, yes, I've been thru all of the pain years ago.
This time around, my site was neither hit in September, nor this spring, I'm actually up 30% YoY compared to 2023.

I have the following impression which I'd like to share with you:
- Most SEOs/Webmasters I see posting are wanting to get back to where things were X month ago. Get that revenue back, get the amount of visitors back ... sure, that's understandable.
But: Why do I have the impression people fail to recognize the world is changing rapidly, and why does nobody dare to consider that maybe the past years success were the unrealistic phase, or maybe just a temporary term that allowed for certain business models?
Sure, if you happened to build a career during the past ten years and have adopted to thinking this was a viable way to feed a family, that is hard to accept.
You can go back and try to "fix things" hoping it will turn things around, but if there is a grain of truth to my thought, you might as well spend time trying to revive a dead horse that will not smell any better in a year from now, as the digital world is moving on, and especially younger people are moving away from the classic ways to use the web that you and me are so fond of.
I bet any 20 year old has totally different view and expectations towards google then us folks, and by the time we have overhauled our content for the nth time, that generation will have completely adopted to finding info on TikTok, shopping on Temu and getting answers from chatGPT. This has nothing to do with your site and the quality you have managed to create, don't be fooled to think you made a mistake - things are moving on.
Maybe all the HCU fuss is about google realizing this is happening in the long run, and trying to find ways that keep it relevant and profitable. They might be a victim of the changing times just as much as webmasters feel they are a victim of googles HCU.

I'm aware I am playing the devils advocate here, but I'm hoping it may be perceived as a valid perspective to add to the discussion, and might even help someone in need of a wise life decision to get there.

Maybe you must review you project and ask yourself:
- is it possible your site does serve a purpose, but failed to become a reference or brand? I see people posting stats who gained literally millions of google clicks every day for years, but obviously nobody of those millions of eyeballs recognized that page was worth remembering.
If you have had such strong traffic for a longer period of time and still nobody remembers, recommends or misses your site, then that does indicate something.
I'm aware building a brand deliberately is difficult, but if you had zillions of visitors over a decade and have not accidentally built the slightest brand in the course of the years, then that is quite odd, too.
If people claim the HCU had killed the independent publishers, to then reveal google was able to obliterate their projects traffic by 95% in two days, then one must wonder where the claimed independence is hiding. To be that dependent on google was a mistake (hey, I've made it, too!), maybe it is better to fix that aspect (or give up the idea of your project being a source of reliable income) then to put energy into re-instating that unhealthy addiction to googles traffic.

One more:
I believe it is agreed that google has been able to analyze & predict searcher intent for quite some time, especially with regard of the potential intent to spend money during the current browsing session.
It will not take nearly as much wizardry to determine a websites publishers intent.
I feel much of what the HCU does seem to do has to do with publishers intent.
From what I have read, "informational" or "review" sites with the publishers intent to make money off of ads, affiliate links or lead-gen are being hit the hardest.
They have the "secret intent" of making a living off of that site, while presenting they love to share information out of sheer goodness, which is a bit of a hoax, really.
People who used to build websites to share their love for some topic out of sheer goodness look very different to SEO optimised and keyword researched articles, let's be honest.
There are also rumors sites that have a shop and openly sell something are less affected - that would fit the "publisher intent" theory, as those publishers openly admit what the intention is. Wanting to sell a product is not a bad thing, and operating a shop always comes with much higher credibility barriers (as you need to be approved by some payment provider and have commerce legislation to obey, which pure blogs don't have to). From googles perspective, such sites are potential advertising customers, as they "only" need to raise prices by the PPC for a google ad (in theory) to stay afloat. That is a major difference to the first group of sites, think about it!
Last, we see UGC being pushed heavily - what is the publisher intent here? As long as the UGC is not bot-spammed and abused by some SEO tacticians, genuine user generated content still has that non-commercial publisher intent. BiggusDickus1984 on reddit does not make any dollars, he/she/it may be biased by a lot of things, but squeezing money is not one of them. Which is why both users and AI-training-data scouts are fond of well spam-flltered UGC IMO.

What worked well for me in the long run was to untangle income-generation from my website, and let it run as a profitable side gig. Interest in what my site is all about has been going down steadily (check google trends for your topics overall popularity some time, look at minimum five years trends to get away from the algo hurt!), but those who are interested in my niche realize what unique service they find, and are willing to support that. Having 60% direct traffic, 20% branded search and 20% organic keyword search is closer to independence then many sites I have looked at. Maybe that is a route that may work for some of you, too.

Sorry for the endless read & thanks for having me :)

[Conro]

@MrSnuts Sorry but I didn't get to read the whole novel you wrote. I read that you mentioned Tiktok for information, sorry again, but am I the only one who on tiktok finds stupid people who only do nonsense? I've never found anything informative on tiktok. ChatGPT? ChatGPT is still immature, it gives you answers about anything, but it does everything wrong, no one would use it as a reliable source of information. Regarding the brand there are sites that are searched only when there is a need, a guide site It can't be compared to a news site. The first will hardly be a brand, the second is easier. The word brand came out of google as a solution to tell you that if you don't have direct traffic, it's going to be very difficult for it to keep sending you out, if it's not like you're a huge site. That's because with sge, google is trying to keep the traffic all to itself. You build a brand over many years, on and off the internet and with tons of money and people who know how to support you, we talk about brands like it's the easiest thing in the world, like tomorrow I'm going to be "Nike" by snapping my fingers

[Conro]

@MrSnuts I've just read about advertising and affiliations. Do you think one spends 8 hours writing articles on a site every day for glory? It's not that if I do a job for passion I have to do it for free, the advertising I use is that of Google and a slice of the pie is taken by them who, like me, don't work for free. Links to products are useful to the user, because he wants to know where to buy, if there is affiliation the user nothing changes, always at the same price he buys the things he needs, Also I don't force anyone to buy anything, the purpose of the article is a guide, if you want to support me and buy after my help many thanks. Google penalizes affiliate sites for just that, it sends them back to the purchase site and not to Google to click on their money-eating advertisement.

[Micha]

@MrSnuts Of course it's right to look at the big picture and not get caught up in conspiracy theories, but conjecture is part of recognising the causes and you shouldn't confuse the two.

I'm glad to read that you manage to earn €2,000 a month and that it hasn't affected you, but I see that as the exception rather than the rule.

It's also clear that a business changes and you can never maintain a state because it moves, that's just the risk of self-employment.

I'm only speaking for myself now, because I've always had to deal with big publishing houses as competitors and I'm aware that my publishing house is only a small player.

Although we have developed into a brand in my field over the years, my website has always been kept small by Google. Nevertheless, I am not surprised by the competition, or rather, I am aware of it. What's happening now, though, is that Google automatically favours the big publishers no matter what. You can see this at Discover, where three top dogs dominate almost every topic in Germany. And how do these websites differ from the others? They also only have adverts and that's it.

Nevertheless, you should of course also explore other avenues. In my case, for example, it's a podcast that I've been publishing every week for years (now the only one in this niche in Germany), but even here it's like this: one of the top dogs publishes an episode on the topic, all other podcasts on the topic slide down the rankings. Where is the logic here?

And unfortunately, the news sector in particular is very dependent on Google, as this company dominates the market. TikTok etc. are all well and good, but not suitable for every sector.

In my opinion, the problem is not automatically your own work, but the rating systems. How are you supposed to build a brand if Google won't let you and how are you supposed to establish yourself if you are suppressed? It's not for nothing that the media regulator started interfering a few weeks ago.

The big top dogs are favoured and this update makes it even clearer.

For me personally, there's just a lack of fairness, i.e. everyone being treated equally, and the latest update makes it clear that not everyone is being treated equally. And I think a lot of people are annoyed by this very fact.

[Micha]

Oh, by the way, I agree with one thing, or rather you should take a look at it: Advertising. What you can actually see with most of the sites that have lost, they have too much advertising on the website.

[Conro]

@Micha A lot of sites that have been awarded during the hcu have ads everywhere, with videos playing all the time, so I don't think it's the main cause of the hcu is the publicity. If Google paid more for fewer banner ads, there would be fewer ads, On the other hand, google adsense pays less and less and contrary to what some gurus used to say, it doesn't increase the cpc if you publish fewer banners. This was one of the worst fake news. If Google then sent targeted advertising for the type of site and not everything that passes through its hands, we would all be happier.

[Micha]

nobody knows what the main cause is, i can only say what i observe. at the moment we can only speculate anyway and we will probably never know.

[Conro]

@Micha exactly, we can only imagine and go by trial and error. For example, i removed from my site a subdirectory with thousands of affiliated articles that I had written over many years. I left only a few guides and reviews. I removed the articles because google now penalizes affiliates Much more than before. Just look at the serp, for many queries the affiliated sites have disappeared leaving room for ecommerce and sites that do not respond to queries. Other than that, nothing has changed after the change made. Obviously, the content that I deleted will be published on other sites because in addition to having cost me many hours of work, it is also useful to users (the fact that the returns of products were very few or no for months is the confirmation)

[MrSnuts]

@Micha: I am aware 2k/month is not the rule, I just wanted to point out it is possible, even with google acting the way it does. There are so many people telling you things are over, I just wanted to oppose that impression.

@Conro: Your view on TikTok and chatGPT is fine with me, but if the majority of younger users have a different opinion then you and me, our ship is sinking no matter how "right" we are. You can hope these platforms will go away and people will return to what you feel was better, I wouldn't want to bet on that tho, just watch the youngens use their phones for 10minutes.
I do not think "writing good content without an income is not viable" is an argument when asking for things to change. It is a valid conclusion one can reach, and one can make decisions based on that conclusion, but you can hardly expect the world to change so your ideal situation becomes financially viable. That's not how economics work. Your product might be the bestest, if there is no-one willing to pay for it, well...

@Micha: During history, access to publishing has always been regulated by middlemen. In music, you had the bands -> labels -> market chain, and in written content you had authors -> publishers ->market. We have seen a short wild-west phase where google acted as anyones publisher for free, and as long as not everybody and their dog went into web-publishing, that worked amazingly well.
Now that the number of publishers has become too big and AI publications are adding to the amount of publications, this is bound to fail.
The number of people inside any economy that survive on publishing news has to be somewhat limited, there simply is not that much demand to be met.
I know it's saddening for the high quality niche publishers like you, but it is nothing totally new or google related either. Niche business is difficult, and the smaller the niche, the less space there is for business success... that should be pretty obvious.
It does not take google to build a brand, either, take again TikTok, they became known without any organic help from google.
I feel it is not the best idea to stay stuck in the "only google (or people regulating google) can fix the issue!" line of thought.
Time & the market will fix the issue, we better make sure to take our goods to where the consumers will be shopping, if you know what I'm trying to say.
If you are sure your goods are great, and demand is still there, there really is little to be afraid of.
It is however possible to be outcompeted by others who objectively offer a less-good service, it's sad, but you can see it everywhere in the non-digital world as well, without any google involvement.

[Conro]

@MrSnuts Google and tiktok are two platforms that people use for different purposes And it's like comparing a restaurant to a plumbing store that treats different things in different ways. At most, you can compare tiktok with YouTube, and both are used for entertainment. In my experience, YouTube is superior to tiktok in everything, but I appreciate the idea of short videos. Tiktok didn't need Google, Also before that it was musical ly, already known in China , but as I said to create a brand you have to have tons of money and Google will like you too. I don't even know what tiktok is doing in the serp, if you're not subscribed you can't see the videos (another Google partnership maybe?)

[Micha]

@MrSnuts You, I agree, it's far from over and I also agree that you shouldn't rely too much on Google (or better not at all). I even take a more sober view of the AI trend, because the bubble will burst at some point.

The way I see it, Google is a part of the whole, a big part, but only a part, and I have never relied on Google completely. Take advertising for example: we market our ad space ourselves, with no partners in between or anything, and we make a pretty good living from it, regardless of ranking.

I also agree that the news market is oversaturated and I think Google sees it that way too and therefore favours big, well-known sites. I personally think this is a mistake as it extremely limits the versatility of news and I am in favour of a fair market, but well, Google is Google. Unfortunately, the crowding out is always there, there just needs to be enough capital.

I will continue to oppose TikTok, but we in the team have already decided on other paths we will take. Giving up is not an option, nor is blaming Google alone.

But apart from the publishing industry, I have to say that Google's actions are destroying the diversity of the internet and unfortunately more and more small businesses are becoming invisible. Unfortunately, this is a fact that urgently requires regulation. A company must not have so much power that its arbitrary behaviour practically destroys many small and innovative companies because they are no longer visible.

[MrSnuts]

@Conro: I appreciate your view on things, and I can only repeat that whilst people of a certain generation will feel certain platforms are for certain purposes, other user generations might take a different view. If that is the case, waiting for them to take ones point of view is fighting windmills.

I noticed the thread's title included the question on how to recover, and I apologize for not having contributed to that part of the intended discussion.
I guess my best advice for those in need to secure survival is to think forward instead of trying to revive the past state.
I guess I have wasted about two years of my life trying that when my project was hit years ago, and I can only advise not to make that mistake.
Thinking about it, I'd love to take the challenge to look at some sites and offer some creative ideas on where the future of that project might be found (or sadly reach the conclusion that this type of content has possibly reached it's end of relevance). I simply don't see much sense in chasing a google #1 position that delivers only a fraction of what it delivered five years ago.

@Micha: I fully agree on your demanding regulation of google, it is a shame they are getting away with ruining what the internet might have been in a perfect world. In all fairness, I'll add that I wouldn't want to have to deal with the mess of spam, misinformation, botcontent and whatnot we are expecting google to filter perfectly. There are information wars going on out there, and here we sit expecting our niche sites to be presented nicely in the middle of that warzone... that's a bit ironic to think about.
Great to read you have independent advertisement deals, I never succeeded with that, so hats off!

[Conro]

@Micha Do you run banner ads that link to other sites? Or just a banner with no links?

[Conro]

@MrSnuts Let me try to explain myself better. Traffic has not decreased from google because people have switched to tiktok or other platform, it has decreased because google has decided to penalize it is not clear yet why small and medium sites. People use google, they use YouTube and they use tiktok Exactly the same as before, Neither of these sites excludes the other.

[Micha]

@conro normal linking and the banners are added to the page via Revive.

@MrSnuts that's quite ironic, some people apparently believe or hope that they will come out of the war as the laughing third, which of course won't happen.

[Conro]

@Micha I asked you because for the banners with direct links I would be careful, even if they have the "sponsored" and "nofollow"

[Micha]

They're not direct links, but I should probably really check that out