Let's talk about Google updates and why they are complete BS. As someone who has been in the search / internet marketing industry since 2008 the money grab and the greed that we now see from Google after covid times are insane. Google keeps trying to peddle this whole "create quality content" and "look at us, we are fighting spam with spam updates and HCU", and what do we see in the end? Site owners that pour their heart into their sites get hit, while BS AI spam, useless AI overviews that are so fking inaccurate, and parasite SEO strives.

u/Google, honestly, WTF are you doing? What type of morons work there? eCommerce results are complete garbage with repetitive results from brand sites, which, in most cases, don't even carry the product. Forbes is now apparently a review site, and they are so good at reviewing everything, from printers to plumbers, movers, and service-based businesses, Google absolutely loves them.

Sh*t like seoinla . com has been ranking for keywords like "SEO Los Angeles" for over a year and passed every update, it must be great content and user experience, and they definitely fulfill user intent. Links like goo. gl/ maps/ KWrg4qPqKEN9mMer5 are now also ranking instead of the actual websites.

Hacked redirect spam rankings are at an all-time high, and that's probably the funniest thing to me. Imagine you create 100 good quality articles, it takes Google fking for EVER to index those. But as soon as your WP site gets hacked with Chinese redirect spam, OMG, Google gets a hard-on and will index those 1000s of pages in 24 hours. Can someone explain that to me? How stupid does your algorithm honestly have to be where it can't differentiate hacked pages vs the actual content? If my site is about T-shirts, and all of a sudden it gets hacked, and now I have 1000's of pages about p..rn and other BS, why algorithm doesn't throw a red flag and says, "Wait a second, this site had only 100 pages yesterday about T-shirts, today they have 10,000 adult pages, something doesn't add up", but instead, Google is like "f*k yeah, let's index those 10k pages and rank them for xxx videos, that seems legit".

u/google is losing it, well actually, lost it. They turned into a BS search engine that no longer puts users first, it's now more about how much money they can squeeze out of business owners and fill their pockets. They completely obliterated content publishers which they used to gain their dominance in the first place.

Google ads are also a complete sh*t where the CPC and CPL are so high now that it's not even worth running those ads anymore.

So dear u/google, go F yourself, since you are now completely useless to 90% of the publishers / small business owners.

And yes, the only way to do SEO now is to churn and burn AI spamming and blackhat since the dumbass Google algorithm can't differentiate between quality content and garbage.

I own a home building company that would only get clients who are local. I'm trying to be one of the top ranked companies in the local area and I'm wondering if making blog posts would help with my SEO ranking or if that's not necessary for a business based in local construction. Any other recommendations would be appreciated!

I'm an SEO on Fiverr with about 3-5 clients monthly for my keyword research gig. Using SEM rush and Ahrefs is a bit expensive. Can you suggest the best keyword research tools out there under $50/month? Thanks

Hi reddit 👋,

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Hi everyone, I’m looking for recommendations for a the best SEO manager tool to help with my blog built with Wordpress.

• The blog is new and so I can’t afford Ahrefs/Semrush
• I would like to track basic things like volume, KW difficulty/competition…

What tools would you recommend?Thanks!

What is the best technical SEO secret that you know

What is the best SEO secret that you know

Searching for a single period (”.”) on Google ranks Reddit as the top result, linking to a post about YouTube. It’s completely irrelevant and highlights how flawed Google’s algorithm can be with the past updates.

I started doing SEO in 2016 and have worked with many clients across various niches. Back then, the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) was much better, and it was easier to predict ranking possibilities for clients. Today, things are completely different.

The SERP is broken, filled with spammy and irrelevant websites, even in the local SEO market. What Google claims and what it actually does often seem like complete opposites (and, of course, they’ll never reveal their algorithm secrets). Over the past 1-2 years, the stress of doing SEO has significantly increased. It feels like it’s time to pivot to paid advertising or explore other opportunities.

Finding relevant sites is not easy and even when you find some, the site owner is just spamming articles with links for a price.

So I have this little trick to find very niche relevant sites that you can outreach and usually they do not sell links and are easy to convince on a low price.

This is my unique method and I have not seen anyone doing anything like this.

Here is how to do this.

• Go to Flippa, empire flippers or similar platforms
• Search for your niche
• Filter websites/e-commerce businesses
• Filter site age to <2
• Copy the site urls you see
• Filter sites that you think have enough traffic
• Outreach

These businesses are looking for an exit and they can get some extra bucks for a simple link. They get some money that they can add to MRR and sell for a higher price too, you get a highly relevant link for a great price.

This works for every niche. You can ask them to add your link into an existing ranking page or on a new post.

Hope this helps. I was thinking of starting a series of posts where I share unique tips related to SEO. Let me know if I should.

I own a site that sits on a very strong domain, with high domain authority. We usually have 2.5m impressions per day.

The site was recently hacked and 10ks of pages were created with spam kws and images that included redirects and what have you. We've cleaned the site.

During this attack the site's traffic blew up to 66m impressions a day. In the last 7 days we had 3.9m clicks and 266m impressions, according to search console.

Top kw with highest traffic was xnxx, on 6th position. 46m impressions and 742k clicks in 7 days.

Next one was xvideos, 6th position, 88k clicks in 7 days.

Pornhub 6th position

xxx - 9th position

Porno - 10th position.

How on earth did my nothing to do with sex related site ranked so high for these KWs, and am I sitting on some sort of goldmine that I don't know how to tap into? How can I monetize this?

I don't know about you but I have noticed google this year is basically a site that almost 80-90% ads. It also getting worse.

The advertising keeps pushing results down. Lets be honest unless you fighting for a keyword that no one wants your lucky to get to page 2 now. The reality is even if you do a good job you going t o sit on page 3 or 4 now.

Knowing this it seems that traditional SEO with Google is dead. I think a lot concepts of SEO still make sense but the goal of just trying to get a link is basically a dead end. I am starting to think of SEO more of Public Relations.

This is really frustrating. My website was growing this year, I managed to get an average of 1k daily clicks, and now it’s all gone. I don’t even know the reason, and I have no idea what to do.

Did this happen to others as well? Is there anything I can do to find out what’s wrong with my site?

Hi....

I am starting a small buisness that installs, replaces, repairs and unclogs toilets. This is a very niched down business. I found a few people in the US who are doing the same thing and they install 4-8 toilets a day. Unfortinatly most of the clients are new... not repeating.... so I need to market myself.

For those of you who deal with home service businesses.... how much do you see your clients spending on SEO, Google Ads and marketing every month?

I have seen recommendations for YouTube channels on Reddit, but I'm looking for an updated list of channels and resources to learn about SEO. :)

I've tried Rhino Rank, Link builder IO and that fat fucking joe website.

All 3 of these dumbasses resold me cheap link farm links. The exact same backlinks that I find in those indian reseller lists at $50 a pop.

Where am i actually supposed to find someone who can build backlinks on real sites that don't exist solely for the purpose to link to other sites?

Any help would be much appreciated.

As 2024 wraps up, it's time to reflect and prepare for 2025. What’s the one SEO strategy that worked wonders for you this year and you’re doubling down on for next year? And on the flip side, what’s the one mistake or outdated tactic you’re leaving behind? Let’s discuss and learn from each other’s experiences—share your tips, wins, and fails!

Dear 'Google Discover-approved' site owners, how many posts do you publish per day? And any tips to appear in Discover? Thanks!

Did anyone notice the same? Huge impression drop on new website

For my Art Nouveau related website I was doing research on a German architect Emil Kärn. When I type "Emil Kärn architect" (with no quotes) into Google here's what I see: the hit #1 is a page that doesn't even contain either "Emil" or "Kärn" and obviously has absolutely no relevance to the query (WTF, Google?). Most of the rest of the hits have nothing to do either but a few are about buildings built by Emil Kärn - simply mentioning him by name with no biographical info. Someone who believes that if something is not on Google then it simply doesn't exist (that would describe me up until recently) would conclude that there's no biographical info on Emil Kärn online, right?
But type the exact same query into DuckDuckGo or Bing and discover at least FOUR pages specifically dedicated to Emil Kärn, containing his dates of birth and death, the list of buildings he designed etc. None of those are on Google at all (anymore).
How on Earth could that be possible? As Google won't comment on the specifics of its ranking algorithm, I can only speculate that it's probably because all those pages do not contain any sort of text in them. But for this specific category of websites (database/directory) it's by design, not by omission or laziness. They are not supposed to have any coherent text which does not make them any less helpful to people doing specific factual research. But Google in its justified fight against crappy, SEO-oriented "unhelpful" texts apparently equalized "no text" with "shitty text" thus throwing a whole category of websites off the index.
Or maybe it means that all "niche" content that is not widely popular, is out for good? In other words, if your query is not about Taylor Swift or what's going on in Syria, forget about Google and switch to Bing/Duck?

Is there any hope for us users doing serious research on the web and for us site owners whose websites dropped off the face of Google overnight? Yes, I'm running a database website myself but I don't want to make it about me because clearly I am not the only victim, there's a whole category of websites that got de-indexed by Google recently.
What do you think? Did you have a similar experience? Do you agree with my wild hypothesizing or do you have another explanation? Do you think there is any way for us to get through to Google with this problem? Do they even care?

Let's take a look at what happened in the SEO industry over the past week!

Updates

• November Core Update rollout complete

The rollout of the November Core update took longer than expected—nearly 3 weeks—and officially concluded on December 5. However, tools continued to report high search result volatility during the weekend on December 7-8.

• Site reputation abuse FAQ

In the previous digest, we discussed Google’s expanded site reputation abuse policy and its recommendation against moving penalized content to new locations. Google has now added an FAQ section with detailed guidance on handling such scenarios. Key points include:

• Moving content to a subdirectory or subdomain within the same domain: This doesn't address the underlying issue and may be seen as an attempt to bypass Google’s spam policies, which may potentially lead to broader site penalties.
  
• Moving content to another established site: This resolves the issue for the original site, but may create reputation abuse concerns for the receiving site, particularly if it has an established reputation and the third-party nature remains unchanged.
  
• Moving content to a new domain: This is less likely to cause issues if the new domain has no prior reputation and complies with Google’s spam policies.

Reminder: When moving content, you must submit a reconsideration request to lift any manual action. Google also advises against redirecting URLs from the old site to the new one, as this could reintroduce the abuse issue. Instead, link to the new site using the nofollow attribute.

Resources:

Google Search Status Dashboard > Incidents > November 2024 core update

Home > Search Central Google Search > Central Blog

Home > Search Central > Documentation

___________________________________________

Search

• Delayed indexing in Google Search

On December 9, Google announced indexing delays. They’ll keep posting updates every 12 hours on the Search Status Dashboard (linked in heading).

• Google Search YouTube Summary (pilot)

Glenn Gabe reported on the updated saying: “Google Search is piloting a new format that provides an 'easy to digest summary of YouTube videos based on their queries.’”

Here are the key points from Google’s email to creators:

• New, highly visual video search carousel: When people search queries relevant to your videos, a carousel may appear in Google Search featuring content from you and other YouTube creators.
  
• Easy to digest summaries: People can expand featured content in the carousel and view a text and image summary of the video. Summaries are created using Al, and will feature the most relevant parts of the video for the given search query.
  
• Encourages people to engage with your content: The expanded summary will also prompt people to watch your video on YouTube or explore your channel.

Resources:

Google Search Status Dashboard > Incidents > Google Search is experiencing an indexing issue

bsky | Glenn Gabe

___________________________________________

GSC

• Google Search Console removes Legacy tools & reportsGSC has dropped the "Legacy tools and reports" section from its sidebar navigation. While it isn’t clear when exactly this happened, it likely coincided with the removal of the page experience report in mid-November.

• Google Search Console Links report with large change in links?GSC's link count metrics have seen a dramatic update, with notable increases reported since June.

Resources:

Search Engine Roundtable | Barry Schwartz

___________________________________________

AI

• The Gemini app for iPhone is live

With Gemini Live, users can engage in natural, conversational interactions, including the ability to interrupt or change topics, and customize the assistant's voice from ten distinct options.

The app supports over ten languages with plans to expand further. Additionally, Gemini facilitates smarter studying by providing tailored study plans and quizzes, and can generate high-quality images from text descriptions using the Imagen 3 model.

And, of course, the app integrates seamlessly with other Google products like YouTube, Maps, Gmail, and Calendar, allowing users to access relevant information within a single conversation.

• Will the Apple Intelligence integration with Google Gemini happen soon?After the integration of OpenAI's ChatGPT into iOS 18.2, Apple has expressed interest in incorporating other AI models, such as Google's Gemini, into its Apple Intelligence platform. But recent reports indicate that this integration is not expected until sometime in 2025.

In the meantime, iPhone users can access Google's AI advancements through the standalone Gemini app available, as we already know, on the App Store.

• OpenAI’s Sora goes live

OpenAI’s video generation model, Sora, is now available.

Sora is included as part of ChatGPT’s Plus account at no additional cost. You can generate up to 50 videos at 480p resolution or fewer videos at 720p each month.

For those who want more Sora, the Pro plan includes 10x more usage, higher resolutions, and longer durations.

OpenAI adds:This version of Sora has many limitations. It often generates unrealistic physics and struggles with complex actions over long durations.

Resources:

Google > Products > Gemini

9to5mac | Michael Burkhardt

Open AI

___________________________________________

Shopping

• Product Studio is now available in 15 new countries

Google’s Product Studio, an AI-powered suite for creating and enhancing product images, has expanded to 15 new countries, bringing its total reach to 30 countries.

The tool simplifies the process of creating professional product visuals with features like generating lifestyle scenes using AI, enhancing image resolution, and editing backgrounds.

Accessible via Merchant Center or the Google & YouTube app on Shopify, Product Studio helps businesses create appealing visuals that can attract more customers. More countries and features are expected in the coming months, with a beta program available for early access to new tools.

Resources:

Google Merchant Central Help > Announcements

___________________________________________

Tidbits

• Web Almanac SEO chapter

The Web Almanac's SEO chapter provides an in-depth analysis of factors affecting organic search visibility, backed by data from HTTP Archive, Lighthouse, and Chrome User Experience Reports. This is a must-read for shaping next year’s SEO strategy.

Resources:

Web Almanac | Jamie Indigo, Dave Smart, Mikael Araújo, and Michael Lewittes

Spam updates. Google linked to its standard spam updates documentation that reads:

“While Google’s automated systems to detect search spam are constantly operating, we occasionally make notable improvements to how they work. When we do, we refer to this as a spam update and share when they happen on our list of Google Search ranking updates.

For example, SpamBrain is our AI-based spam-prevention system. From time-to-time, we improve that system to make it better at spotting spam and to help ensure it catches new types of spam.

Sites that see a change after a spam update should review our spam policies to ensure they are complying with those. Sites that violate our policies may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all. Making changes may help a site improve if our automated systems learn over a period of months that the site complies with our spam policies.

In the case of a link spam update (an update that specifically deals with link spam), making changes might not generate an improvement. This is because when our systems remove the effects spammy links may have, any ranking benefit the links may have previously generated for your site is lost. Any potential ranking benefits generated by those links cannot be regained.”

Source:

searchengineland.com/google-december-2024-spam-update-unleashed-449556

I checked on AHrefs, and some random new backlinks appeared from fiver about supplying new backlinks. I didn’t ask for this. Will these impact my trust signals with google?