Hi - impressions are the most important metric to indicate whether you may have been hit.

But the update runs for a month, and results could change on a daily basis.

OK thanks. I expected that they would just de-index the pages or change the rankings and I've seen neither. This does make sense though

My africa site gets indexed, de indexed, indexed, it's a carrousel

My impressions went to to about 100 to 150 a day. It was at 175 to 200. So maybe a little hit with me.

But, im still writing

Still rank high on page 2-4. But my site is only about 4 moths old

You are wrong here. I have around 2500 posts in my main three sites and none of them is AI generated. They were destroyed a few months ago when the traffic dropped to 10%, and they are trashed again these days. Note that these sites were excellent in Google's eyes for many years, this is why they were generating a 6 figure income. But suddenly they are worthless for Google. This is a ridiculous behavior.

Please read what I wrote! I am only talking about this update!!!
I know all about the stupid updates a few months ago!

I lost 99% of the traffic! And are in huge fight and pressure to survive with only 14 visitors in stead of few thousand montly.
Which made me have a huge problem with Amazon, plus other things.

I am also talking about the latest update, read what I wrote.

It is absolutely heart breaking and nonsensical.

Then don´t write like this!
"They were destroyed a few months ago." No way to take it as the old one!

You mean this update cannot be as bad as the previous one? If so, you are right, of course it cannot be, the previous did the job, the current is just destroying what is left, and this is very little. I see drop, so it is not only about affecting AI generated sites.

Anyway, I realize that you are affected badly as well. My opinion is that this has no future, and I am not even concerned any longer. I do not expect anything, good or bad.

Exactly, nonsensical. It is about the sites that were never negatively affected by any algorithm update from the same Google. They were loved by Google.

After crash, my bookkeeper told me instantly, they want you to pay (for ads). Clever man.

No, I meant what I wrote. But I stop now.

Then the meaning of what you wrote remains unclear to me.

Yes, you are right. Google is stupid that they are ranking many spammy sites and irrelevant content for product reviews. Their recent updates mess up the search results. One website can rank multiple links on page one. It's a joke haha.

I don't have as many articles (around 500) but the exact same thing happened to me. Been an uphill battle since November...

I so wish I could disagree with you, but it has happened to me more than once.

Sorry to hear that, it is hopeless. Some people here are managing to compensate the traffic at least partly through Pinterest and YT. But those are of no much use for me.

Okay, I've never mentioned this ON the platform (I have outside), as it's a "bit Blackhat" (but don't forget my background is BlackHat marketing, LOL).

However, the reason I haven't mentioned it is because it CURRENTLY works, but with some of these "in-between the lines" paragraphs of text in the current Core & Spam Update Google guidelines, it's clear that this method will probably work "in-between" updates (as an example, from April until September, but after that your site might get "hit" again).

Anyway, here it is:

This works well if you have a domain that is slightly aged, but has never had ANYTHING on it (also check it in Wayback machine https://archive.org/web/ to ensure there hasn't been any "previous activity" on that domain name from BEFORE you purchased it, and then run it through ahrefs backlink checker https://ahrefs.com/backlink-checker to ensure that there aren't any "previous" backlinks pointing to it. You want the domain to be "clean".

Next, you find all the articles that were doing well BEFORE the first HCU (from August 2022).

Copy and paste those articles onto the new domain.

Either Deindex the articles from the ORIGINAL website in Google Search Console or delete them and add the 410 plugin to your original website and then after they have been deleted, add the 410 status (this means that the article is permanently deleted and there is no need for Google to crawl that url again).

Do this for ALL articles that were DOING WELL in the SERPs BEFORE they got hit.

Any articles that WEREN'T doing well BEFORE HCU you can IGNORE THESE.

So, you only want to copy and paste (and then delete/deindex from the original website) all the articles that were doing well on the "old" website onto a NEW DOMAIN.

As I say, this has worked well with aged domains that YOU'VE OWNED with NO "previous history and backlink profile"<----This is ONE of the things that the current Google Spam Update is targeting.

You can try it with a brand new purchased domain (still do the wayback machine and backlink checks, just because you have newly purchased a domain today doesn't mean that it wasn't owned by a spammer about 10 years... ME!!! Hahahahahahaha!!!), BUT, you will typically have to go through the "beginning period" of a new domain.

Additionally, due to the "Mass Produced AI Content" also in the current Spam update, don't add more than 5-10 articles a day using this method.

THIS is currently the only real thing that I've seen "recover FULLY" from the HCU.

So, to summarise (yes, I could've done that initially., LOL).

Find articles that were performing fantastic BEFORE HCU
Copy and paste to a new "clean" domain (aged if possible, do you have a stock of owned domain names? if not, why not?)
Deindex or delete with 410 from original website

You have about 6 months to "make a profit" hahahahahahahaha!!!

It might be longer, BUT, Google ranked these articles very well before, but HCU was a SITEWIDE thing (this is ALSO CHANGING in the current CORE update, so "helpful articles" on your site will rank and "unhelpful" articles won't), so your "good" articles got dragged down by your "bad" articles, and HCU was "Sitewide" which is why most people lost 70-90% of traffic.

THIS MEANS THAT GOOGLE DID CONSIDER SOME OF YOUR CONTENT "HELPFUL"

Now, the above may be a "short-term" fix...

BUT

On an aged CLEAN domain, putting 150-300 "previously considered good" articles on a month, you will see (I have seen this with my OWN EYES, IT WORKS, BUT it WILL eventually die once Google sorts all this stuff out, but if you get 6-18 months from it you can make a lot of money from 2,000+ articles during that time) a sharp rise in traffic, the "hocley stick" will happen VERY QUICKLY)

Even just having Mediavine ads on that HUGE number of "previously good" articles will produce a nice 4-figure sum for the next "6-18 months"... perhaps EVEN LONGER, Google is using Reddit to "understand" content better fro purposes of what's "helpful" and what's not... that could take YEARS!!

But, if someone believes a website is truly dead, rather than deleting it, letting it die when the domain expires, etc. there's no harm in trying this.

This is ALL I'm saying on this as it is a little bit "blackhat", but it DOES WORK, I just don't know how long it will work for.

Thank You Old Fluff for allowing me to "bury" a blog post in the middle of YOUR blog post where hopefully only about 5 people will read ONE of my MANY "dodgy practices"

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Partha

p.s. READ IT AGAIN!!! I know there's a lot of head-scratching going on here.

Yes that would work and it has been a tactic I have employed in the past, fortunately I have over 500 domains and the oldest goes back to 96/97 .
As for Google is using Reddit to "understand" content better fro purposes of what's "helpful" and what's not... that could take YEARS!!
HELP.............................................................................WHAT A WASTE OF SPACE

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

I'm actually doing "Blackhat Reddit Parasite SEO & Affiliate Marketing" at the moment, so I know exactly what crap is on there... I'm producing it!!! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Yup, funnily enough you came to mind when I mentioned "lots of domains"

BUT yes... Google is still an "algorithm", so still "learning constantly"

And as the 2022 and 2023 HCU's were SITEWIDE, this still means that some of your content is considered "helpful" (what's currently ranking), but you have "proof" that Google previously thought some of your "hit" articles were really good before.

So, for now, remove those "good articles" from the SITEWIDE HCU SIGNAL domain and put them onto a "clean" domain... this works especially well if we're talking websites with over 500 "previously good" articles on... we all know that adding 50, 100, 250 isn't going to have a huge impact, which is why it's has to be for sites that have been "hit" that had LOADS of ARTICLES.

I understand totally what you were saying. And I have bookmarked this under blackhat SEO

Interesting, I just realized by using the link you gave that the domain of my best site existed from 2011 as a full size site before I purchased it in 2016. But it did not have negative effects, it was successful from the first day.

Yes, partly with Pinterest and Youtube and even some Facebook, but like about one forth of former SEO traffic, and I wish I had spent a lot more time before on these channels instead of all that time and energy on blogging, just to find out that it isn't that good for my niche anyway. (wish I had known that sooner, as I've seen in one of Vitalys classes on the scale models niche). And if I had focused on Youtube, I would have had maybe a fulltime income by now, because I have been slacking on Youtube because of trying to fix my blog, and it shows there on the views.

Does it even make sense to do blogging?
Every time my traffic starts to go up, google update starts and I'm back down.
It is heartbreaking and so demotivating. So much time and hard work for nothing.

It looks to me that YT is the most promising at the moment. Currently I do get some traffic from it and Pinterest, it is more than from Bing & Yahoo combined. Videos are up and indexed instantly, but this all is far too low. I am not able to scale it up.

Same here

Hey Nat,

I will blog about this today or tomorrow, I just have to think about how to word it, as I don't FULLY agree with most of what I've seen said on the platform so far.

Firstly, no blogging and SEO is NOT dead.

Plus, if you're losing traffic THIS WEEK

BUT

You see nothing in the Security & Manual Actions part of Google Search Console, it may be alright.

Google has been handing out "Full Manual Penalties" and "Soft" Penalties, but for once, these are now all listed in GSC.

The reason I say it may be alright if you're losing traffic and impressions this week but have NOT had a penalty in GSC is that Google is firstly completely deindexing and issuing penalties EVERYWHERE, so it's almost as though this FIRST WEEK (Spam Update last for 2 weeks, Core Update for a Month, and then Parasite SEO update starts first week in May) is just CUTTING EVERYTHING FROM THE SERPs.

Once they've got rid of all the crap then some sites that were hit THIS WEEK, but HAVEN'T been issued a penalty in GSC MAY (I said may, in truth NO-ONE on this planet knows, not even Google employees, the "algorithm" is a machine that is currently being "taught") see impressions and clicks go back up again.

Furthermore, the Parasite "update" for May, I honestly DON'T THINK sites like Forbes, Reddit, Linkedin Pulse will get hit, they will stay, but say a site like OutlookIndia probably will get hit.

"Parasite SEO" is basically people using high DA websites to write "guest posts" and link back to their own website, but the authority website that they have posted on has LOTS of these types of articles that aren't all relevant to the subject of the website.

So, as an example, OutlookIndia is a tech-based website, so why the hell do they have "weight loss" and "affiliate marketing" guest posts on them with about 30 affiliate links on a 500-word post<----- THIS is manipulation, this will get punished.

The reason I think Forbes and Reddit WON'T get "hit" = MONEY!!!!

Google is a business, they are here to make money!!!

I do think the next 8 weeks is going to be horrible in terms of our mental health because you simply don't know what's going on, and most people are going to get hit in this first 2 weeks.

However, once Google has spent 2 weeks "demoting" nearly everyone, and then deindexing and issuing manual penalties against those they wish to punish, they will then "start again" building the SERPs.

So, for now, don't completely abandon a website, and wait it out.

If your motivation is completely dead, just keep updating your website.

This could be as simple as using AI to get some quotes from people in your industry, making an image AI/Canva, and then adding the quote to the image, and then adding 2-3 to each article.

Basically, just keep "ACTIVE" on the website without doing anything too drastic.

The other thing is the HCU "system" has changed from SITEWIDE to page-by-page.

HCU was Sitewide in 2022 and 2023, this means that even if you had "helpful content" on your website, that the whole website would suffer if you had some "unhelpful content".

THIS HAS CHANGED IN 2024.

If Google thinks some of your pages are "helpful", they will rank, and the "unhelpful articles" won't rank.

So, this could mean a LOT of fluctuations over the next 4-8 weeks (again, not great for your mental health, but just keep doing something, even if it's completely social media, for the next few weeks).

I will go into more detail when I blog because I'm already seeing "interesting things" in the SERPs.

Partha

Thank you so much Partha. You are sweetheart ❤️ I have some hope now.
I didnt get any penalties.
On Wednesday I had 6 clicks. It really made me laugh. I mean, I dont have many since September anyway, but 6 was hilarious 😂
I keep updating the old unhelpful content and sharing on flipboard.
I really hope things will get better.
Thank you so much.
Have a great day 🌞
Nat

Let's hope it will get better 🤞

It never walks the talk, it is solely interested in profit, nothing else matters

Right! Its a big business.

Lets put it this way Brenda, a 0000000000000000001 percent of their hourly income paid to you once a year would change your life. If you shared it with me we would both have different options

Reddit is there to stay: https://www.redditinc.com/blog/reddit-and-google-expand-partnership

I know about that. Please tell me something I don't know. I have eyes- my eyes catch things much faster because of my Deafness.

I was referring to Google needing to “remove the spammy content” on Reddit, which is junk, spammy, not helpful, and has no reason to be in the SERPs.

Have you seen their spammy content that is a decade or half a decade old on page 1 in Google-WT$;&!?

No one likes to read outdated junk stuff from ten years ago.

How does that help people?

For example, WA tons of negative spammy reviews from ten years ago are on page 1 from Reddit.

Hey hello? WA no longer has that interface that existed ten years ago - does it? That's not even true for today.

Google says the search must match the “user intent.” outdated spammy content from a decade ago does not meet the “user intent,” which gives false impressions and makes the reader confused.

My hope is that Google won't show all this “Mickey Mouse” bull crap content that are decades old on page 1 after the spammy and core updates are completed.

I hope so too Brenda. It's a real roller coaster every time they come up with a Core Update. But this last one was the worst for us!

Yes, that is true. That is the way it is. That is why we have to use other platforms. Sigh!

I'm just learning how to use Medium now. I'm a bit behind on everything. I kinda lost enthusiasm when my traffic dropped 90% in December and January... slowly growing back as we speak.

I don't blame you for feeling that way. I tried my traffic on Pinterest, and I am not gaining any traffic there, no matter what I do. I don't get it. I don't even have time to do Medium. I feel like I am being pulled into so many different directions, and it takes me hours and hours to do all of it. Financially, I do not have the resources to outsource. Someone suggested hiring someone to help me with YouTube; I must pay for all that. I have to pay for the software, pay for the AI voice-over, pay for the captioning features, and then, on top of it, pay for the outsourcing. I don't have anything to begin with. If I had the money, I would, but I don't. Pedro did a training session saying we ought to monetize a digital product, but I don't even know how to do that either.