I recently got invited out to Google's Mountain View Campus to meet with Danny Sullivan a team of Googler's including Elizabeth Warren and Pandu Nayak.
This is a summary of my trip. I have more quotes to add and will most likely create a follow up article on this with quotes from attendess.
At the end of the day the message was this. Your content is not the reason you are here, Google can do better. And it's not even called Helpful Content Update internally with the engineers. It may have just been mis-named.... Round and round we go.
I Drank the Kool-Aid at the 2024 Google Web Creator Summit
October 29, 2024|SEO
After spending a full day at the Google Campus in Mountain View, California I'm certain of a few things. First and foremost Google knows "we can do better" meaning they're well aware of where search is at the moment and are always experimenting on how to make it better.
According to Danny Sullivan, my "content was not the issue" when referencing the Mountain Weekly News so don't let the HCU update make you automatically question your content. In fact it was clear all the website creators that were in attendance simply got caught up in an algorithm update, nothing more, nothing less.
You're content doesn't suck, if it did you wouldn't be reading this. Even if you managed to lose traffic during HCU update.
So we lost traffic as a whole, thousands if not hundreds of thousands of publishers and it happened to be during the HCU update, but again it wasn't your content that was the issue, surely not for the heartfelt niche site owners that had the courage to show up to Google and speak face to face with some of the team, perhaps responsible for our current position. But assigning blame won't help. I came to Mountain View, California to look for solutions.
I made my points clear numerous times. I was the first speaker and spoke from the heart. No script, no notes, no power slides simply my story which resonated with the Google employees in the room. Even while Danny and Elizabeth Tucker were speaking I couldn't help but blurt out questions, and when we went to break I took the opportunity to have one on one conversations with anyone I can.
At the end of the day I had a question that needed to be addressed:
Mike Hardaker: "We're now 13 months since the HCU update rolled out, I don't believe a single website has recovered, there is plenty of talk on social media on Barry's site and Glenn and nobody has fully recovered. I just need to know how long this is going to take until the next updates and if you truly think any of the next updates have the ability to recover this. We have all tried everything possible in this room throwing spaghetti at walls, we have tried everything.
So I need to know as a business owner if some of our sites have a chance that some of our sites have the ability recover, because we're probably talking hundreds of thousands of websites. And I think everyone in this room is really interested in this question, because it dictates how we move forward.
I'm 44 years old, luckily I don't have a mortgage, I barely getting by, I'm eating at the food bank now, I had grossed $250,000 last year and I just don't know where to go from here my traffic is down 97%
I want to trust in Google, I want to trust in the process but this is really scary as a publisher and content creator."
Pandu Nayak: I have to say I am very very sorry for you, this is not great at all. I can't also give you any guarantees about recovery or not, I think that would not be responsible for me to say this. Because I can't tell what is going to happen. It's just the unfortunate state of how we operate here. We are here listening to you, I think the whole reason we are having this conference at all is for us to hear you out, to get our teams to hear you out.
Our goal is to surface great content for users. I suspect there is a lot of great content you guys are creating that we are not surfacing to our users, but I can't give you any guarantees unfortunately. We are focused on things for our users, that is not going to change.
MH: "And on a personal level, how are you going to feel in a year if zero sites recover? And everyone in this room that works for Google, how will you also feel? Otherwise we just wasted 3 days to come out here, time is the most valuable thing we have to offer"
PN: I have to say that it is exactly the kind of things that drives us forward, I don't see this as a waste, I can see if you don't recover in a certain amount of time I can see you thinking of this as a waste but we find this incredibly valuable to guide the work that we do.
Danny Sullivan: "In August some of the sites saw recovery, but some people are saying I want to be back to where I was in September. I was talking to somebody and I said September is not coming back, the whole format of search results has changed.
One of the biggest thing that has happened, I have seen sites that absolutely believe they were hit by the HCU or other updates, but no you are actually ranked 2 or 3, 4. Your ranking in the top results but going from the 1 to 2 can have a big impact. It's more complicated that. The whole search results have changed, it's possible that maybe things are better down the line.
That's why on the recovery thing it is much more likely that hopefully it's going to be a gradual process. The thing to really watch for is when we do updates. Google will have another update fairly soon, but it probably won't or won't have any updates from what we talked about here because we can't run back and change it that quickly. It kills me because I know that's going to be depressing and I'm also looking forward to the times on on X."
PN: "Just one other comment I would like to make is that we do want to say we have a vested interested in having a great web ecosystem. We are very closely tied to the web ecosystem. I think users benefit hugely from a vibrant ecosystem. Now that doesn't answer your question if you will recover or anyone else in the room will recover. But we think having a vibrant web ecosystem is important, and that drives a lot of our work. "
Forbes Affect
One of the common things the creators in attendance mentioned was Forbes, surprise surprise. The thing is Forbes is NOT actually abusing their power or spamming by writing about a variety of topics according to a chat I had with Danny at the reception over food and drinks after the event.
What is instead happening is "Google's signals can be better at figuring out topical authority type stuff which they are struggling to do at the moment".
I do believe Forbes is involved in something unethical, whatever we want to call it by changing the year on article titles to game Google SERP. And Google is aware..
At the end of the day one of the engineers came up and said "Hey Mike, what do you feel about Forbes?" I smiled and said I wasn't a fan of how Forbes and other sites are figuring out how to manipulate Google's system, and how its not healthy for the entire web ecosystem to have large sites taking all the share of voice from smaller, independent content creators. The fact he even took time to come up and talk with me spoke volumes. Again it turns out Google does care and I would guess Forbes will be slapped a penalty or two. Whatever that looks like who knows.
If you see something, say something. Send Danny emails if you notice bad actors, or ping him on X.
Here are some additional notes and quotes I jotted down from Google for reference.
Googler Quotes
Google's Employees are Not Evil, Lets All Be A Little Nicer Here. Infact the Engineers Were Sort of Scared to Talk To Us, Wonder Why?
"Google probably needs to do better, there is nothing wrong with your sites"
"Google understand previous queries in search"
"E-E-A-T is not for creators, it's for your readers"
"Does the topic of the page match what the searcher is looking for"
"When you think things are broken, please send things to Danny"
"Unfortunately we can't tell you how our signals work"
"Please keep the feedback coming, we really do care and we are listening"
"People want to hear from people"
"To the extend we have AI content trying to swarm results, we launched new policy in March around this sort of thing, we have a great motivation to actually surface real content."
What's Next? Did We Gain Anything Here?
I Got Some Google Swag! Totally Worth the Trip :)
I believe things will get better. I also as mentioned have gone through this before and it took a full 18 months to recover my traffic. We are now 13 months in. Will there be more updates in 2024. You better believe it.
In 2023 alone there were over 4,781 launches not all Updates are actually communicated to the public, only the big ones.
If you're still reading (Hi Mom!) there were a lot of emotions, heartfelt stories, people cried, people laughed, people cringed and people called out Google on just about everything. Nobody on the creators side held back.
The overall tone from the creators wasn't the most positive to be honest, but that's totally expected. People questioned if they even learned anything and lots of folks felt like they were continued to be gaslighted.
At the end of my talk I thanked all the creators in the room, and I thank all of you reading this. "You are true leaders, most other people would have shut up shop and moved on. Your showing strength in the face of diversity, this is what leaders do". And wrapped it up by stating "If Google can help me help other sites recover, myself included I would be happy to testify on Google's behalf to congress that Google does really want to fight for the little guy."
Running on fumes, way to much coffee and heading back to Jackson Hole in the am, where it's currently snowing, which mean I will be back out doing what I love testing snowboard gear on snow by this weekend, winter comes fast in my part of the world!
Alright off to bed, more to follow..
