Earlier today we released the December 2023 core update.
This update will roll out mainly to English-speaking countries first.
We're calling this one the "steal your Christmas turkey" update.
If you notice traffic declines, this might be because you are not Forbes or Reddit.
What a year 2023 was!
💩niche sites decimated
💩livelihoods ruined
💩businesses bankrupted
✅Reddit posts from 2015 win
✅Big brands ranking at the top of SERPs, recommending themselves win
✅High DR sites win
✅Forbes wins❤️
✅Parasite SEO wins
Let's make 2024 even better!
Earlier today we announced the rollout of the April 2024 Core Algorithm update.
It will take approximately two weeks to fully rollout and will impact all countries and all languages.
The main purpose of this particular update is to take whatever traffic you still have left.
Did you know that Forbes currently ranks at the top of 92.36% of all SERPs on the internet?
Instead of complaining about your lackluster rankings, try to learn a thing or two about how they do things.
Take for example the "Forbes Advisor" subdirectory of the site.
Hey we just noticed that you guys are spamming Reddit with your affiliate links and paying for upvotes etc
Can you please cut that out?
We're trying to run a Reddit-based search engine here and you're making us look bad.
Did you know that Google has the power to completely erase ENTIRE businesses overnight, wiping out the livelihoods of everyone who depends on them? 📉
But please don't call us a monopoly.
We're trying to pretend we're not a monopoly so we don't lose that power.
Thanks!
If you're wondering why these updates are only expected to reduce spam by 40% that's because the other 60% of spam on the internet comes from
@reddit
(43%) and
@forbes
(17%).
We want to leave that spam on the internet for now.
All SEOs and niche site owners need to open their eyes to the fact that “helpful content” is all a load of BS.
Fact is, Google made the decision to show UGC and big publishers at the top.
It doesn’t matter how good your content is - you’ll NEVER have a seat at that table.
Dear
@Reddit
We’re sorry for doing this to you.
We didn’t realize the spam would be this bad this soon.
Sell your shares now if you can.
This year isn’t going to end well for you 😬☠️📉
The March 2024 core update is complete, having ended on April 19. The ranking feedback form is now ready at and will remain open through May 31. We’ve also updated our Debugging drops in Google Search traffic help page here:
We’re updating our definition of spam to make things more clear to you, our beloved publisher community.
Ahem… effective immediately, anything not published on
@Reddit
or
@Forbes
will be considered spam.
Everyone is out of business and applying for jobs at McDonalds and
@googlesearchc
is like "Here's how to improve your CWV scores so that if someone ever scrolls down far enough to check what's ranking in position 57 your site will be a good experience for them"
Tone deaf much?
Thanks to everyone who submitted feedback following the completion of our latest algo update.
We didn't bother to read any of them, but just seeing the sheer number of responses gave us a good chuckle.
🤡💩🤮🤬
Things that Google says don't exist/work, but actually, they do:
- Negative SEO
- Toxic Links
- Buying Links
- Parasite SEO
- Exact Match Domains
- Redirects
- Reviews That Have Never Used The Product
- Spamming
Just to be clear, paying for printed business cards is against our TOS.
Just focus on having a good quality business and other people will organically create business cards for you 🌈
Google's new SEO starter guide —
• Don't focus on PageRank/links
• Instead, put your URL on business cards and posters
So all you link builders can stop now, we know the secret sauce
"My well-written content with my own experiences, photos and videos is beaten by "User2325" on Reddit with half a sentence... who gives an incorrect answer.
Where is the EEAT and high-quality content there?"
- quote provided
Guys there’s a copycat account out there putting out inaccurate advice about how our algorithms work.
Obviously, their advice isn’t very helpful, but be careful out there, some people might fall for it.
Please help to report this account to protect the sanctity of the web.
Today we're putting our pencils down and publishing a refreshed SEO Starter Guide, with a better focus on a starter audience. Read more about what changed:
“It’s sickening to think that small businesses can be wiped out on the whim of one person taking seconds to glance at a website and clicking 'yes' or 'no' to apply a manual penalty that deindexes the site.”
-
@NicheSiteLady
recent email newsletter
List of all Google Algorithm updates scheduled for the next couple of months.
February 3rd - HCU hidden gems rollout begins
February 24th - Core update planned
March 3rd - Spam update with improved classifier
March 17th - Kick you in da nuts update planned
Regarding the domain reputation abuse update that we gave our buddies a couple of months to prepare for, just to make things crystal clear, no, Forbes won't be losing any rankings or traffic.
Because, "well, you know, they might be doing lots of other things well"
We’re coming down hard on third party hosted content, but not in-house crappy content.
We’ve rigged this one so that you lose (again) and Forbes stays on top.
Since last September's Helpful Contract Update, there seems to be a lot of confusion from small publishers about how to succeed in Google Search.
It's quite easy:
1. Be a big publisher (even better if about to go public)
2. Sign a Helpful Contract with us
3. Rank ✅✅✅
It’s nice being able to play God and decide which businesses live and die.
Small publishers pouring their hearts into something = die
Spam = 🚀🚀
I just hope we don’t ever lose that power or that someone else has the power to decide our fate.
That would be terrifying 👀👀
Official statement:
Things aren't as good as they could be, some things are clearly outdated or broken.
We want to fix things.
That's why over the last couple of weeks we've been working on the appearance of filters in GSC.
Now you can see your lack of traffic beautifully
Google has slowly been bleeding US search market share for a while, seems this past 30 days was when we started seeing it really ramping up though.. With bing seeing about 2x growth this year already 👀
Google still dominates, but this is further bad news for the company...
We’ve been telling you for years:
Create quality content and you will be aligned with what our algorithm seeks to reward.
That’s why Quora and Reddit are ranking so high in so many SERPs at the moment.
They are the go-to place for high quality content with great EEAT ❤️
Hey
@googlesearchc
can you please start reporting overall search market share each month so that we can all laugh at you and give you some tone-deaf lols like you always do to us?
Really can't wait for the inevitable 80... 70... 60... seeya 👋👋
Thanks
Paging
@bing
🚀🚀🚀
For a company that says to go easy on the ads, Google search is an all-out ASSAULT on the user.
Just ad after ad.
They really make it hard to find Forbes and Reddit 1st and 2nd.
Guys, can you please cut it out with the parasite stuff?
It's already hard enough to arrange the SERPs without you lot making it harder with high DR sites.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, just focus on writing quality content and we'll rank Forbes at the top, ok?
We're making it even easier to find content on Forbes.
January 31st will see the launch of "circle to search" which is a new way to begin a search query on select devices.
Of course, once a search is initiated, we'll serve the user something from Forbes.
Everyone wins.
Ok we'll level with you;
You never really had a chance.
@reddit
cracked the Helpful Contract Update cheat code and
@forbes
gives us money under the table to stay at the top of "best CBD oils".
Come on, admit it, if you were us, you would take the money too, right? 😇
I'll be honest, all of those killer updates in the second half of 2023 weren't designed to improve the SERPs, they were designed to hurt niche site owners, SEOs, affiliate marketers and anyone else that tries to make a living online.
We're a spiteful bunch here at Google.
With how badly Google broke their golden goose product of search, is there any universe in which they're still a dominant force 10 years from now?
Or are they just another Kodak?
🚨 Lawsuit 🚨
Is there a potential class action lawsuit if G is declared a monopoly for unfairly gatekeeping search traffic and diverting it away from small and medium-sized publishers whom G was previously rewarding?
Manual penalties and declaring sites "pure spam" seem risky.
This video is baseless.
Reddit has great anti-spam measures in place.
Just ask user nopants37329, an expert on credit cards, CBD oils, and supplements to give your pets.
@authorityhacker
I want to address the rumors that
@Reddit
gave us their data for a song because we made an under-the-table deal to pump them up ahead of their IPO next month.
Whoever figured that out is really smart.
We care about publishers, we want you to thrive and survive.
How else will we be able to steal your content and present it as our own?
When we say that we want you to survive, that's true, we just want you to figure out some other way to survive that doesn't depend on us ❤️🦄
How's your site doing since the Helpful Contract Update (HCU) rolled out last year?
Did you have a helpful contract in place like
@reddit
?
Or were you caught with your pants down?
It's not too late to get a contract with
@Google
and recover from the HCU 📈📈
page 63 of the Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines gives examples of "low-quality content"
: a forum post with little discussion or only superficial comments
We need to update that to exclude Reddit posts littered with spammed affiliate links - they're still high quality 🚀🚀
I've really had enough of all of the negativity from people lately.
Can't you just say nice things and give us praise?
We can make mistakes, use AI, steal content and have terrible UX, but you can't and THAT'S JUST THE WAY IT IS.
Deal with it and ONLY share positivity🌈👫❤️
I know we’ve been quiet for a while and that’s because we wanted to take our time to think about your feedback rather than put something out that’s not fully baked.
So here is our official announcement on all of the things that you’ve mentioned recently.
Ahem..
We don’t care.
Ok, we've been in bed with
@reddit
for a while now.
So what?!
Are you surprised?
They need to secure the bad on their IPO and we need to secure the data for our AI models.
It's a match made in heaven 😇
I wouldn't want to be
@searchliaison
or
@googlesearchc
at the moment.
With all the hate that we have for the company they work for, let's take the high road and not make things personal.
But man, what a job to have when everything Google says seems to be total BS.
Instead of complaining about why your site isn't performing well in organic search anymore, just focus on creating helpful content, printing business cards, and inking contracts to sell us your data to feed our AI and you might see your rankings improve.
The Verge piece last year was embarrassing and was the trigger for the major shakeups in search over the last 6-8 months.
But when
@elonmusk
embarrasses us like he did today that might just be the catalyst for another big change.
Please don’t embarrass us.
It’s hurtful.
Welcome back to
#HowSearchWorks
with
@methode
. In this week’s episode Gary covers how Search Console processes and analyzes a page’s content to help decide whether or not a page should be indexed. →
#GoogleSearch
I'm more confused after reading this.
Let me break it down for you in simple terms.
If you want to rank, it's really quite straightforward:
- pay for backlinks
- be Forbes
- pay for printed business cards
- say negative things about your competitors out loud
@AndrewGirdwood
@rustybrick
Honestly, I'm at a loss sometimes what else to say. We get asked things like:
Is EEAT a ranking signal?
And say "No, EEAT is not a ranking signal"
And people go "Well, what does ranking really mean. Maybe it's signals? They didn't say it's not signals!"
So do we have a signal…
@googlesearchc
Also, please keep in mind that if your "performance" report still shows any clicks or impressions, we're working on reducing them all to zero soon.
"There is nothing to do with helpful content or the like. Google is a monopoly and it has changed the whole landscape of what to rank in its search.
Unfortunately, due to its 90% dominance in the search game, there is nothing we can do to save our search traffic unless other..
Are you seeing any movement in rankings following the release of our "Steal your Christmas Turkey" update yesterday? 😝
Oh boy, that was a good one, I can't wait for April Fools Day 😇
Damn it
@reddit
get up would you 📈📈📈
We didn't pump your spam-filled thin content to the top of the SERPs for nothing.
We want those shares you gave
@sundarpichai
under the table to be worth something.
We want to work more closely with YOU, the wonderful SEO and niche site community.
We truly value your contribution to a thriving open web and want to support you in more ways.
To that end, I would like to ask:
What changes do you suggest we make this year? 👫🫶
Hey
@Forbes
we're going to have to renegotiate the monthly retainer sorry guys.
1m a month isn't enough anymore.
Too many people are asking questions, even inside our company.
If you want to continue on "halo" mode, it's going to have to be 1.5m/month from February.
Forbes rank very well for "when will the marvels be on disney plus?"
Click, open URL, invited to read more and scroll past the ads only to find out...THEY'RE NOT SURE! As a user, this is a bad experience.
I often wonder how pieces like this continue to be successful in SERPs...
Don't even think about paying for links or paying for printed business cards and definitely don't think about talking about your website in public if it's just to manipulate our algorithm.
None of these are ranking factors, but our quality raters are looking for these signals.
@AzeemDigital
No this is actually a very helpful result.
Forbes can do no wrong as far as we’re concerned.
We’re going to start ranking them for “buy dishwashers online Barcelona” next week.
Speaking aloud your website domain one letter at a time is ok if it happens organically, but not ok if you're doing it to try to manipulate our algorithm.
Honestly, the official account is getting so beat up at the moment I actually feel a bit sorry for them and want to give them a break.
It's like they provide too much fodder for comedy.
It's kinda sad
@SeanDoesLife
@JohnMu
@searchliaison
Happy to provide an official response for you on this matter Sean.
Here’s the thing, SI are a high DR site.
I hope that clears things up.
BIG shakeup for Google Quality Raters
Google cancels contract with Appen/RaterLabs (the company that employs me as a Quality Rater)
No idea what this means to the Quality Rater program
Keep it on the low down, but I heard on the grapevine that Danny has voiced concerns about the disconnect between guidance and the current reality of the SERPs and some are speculating he may not be in the picture for much longer
Great news, Google was voted the MOST LOVED business in the entire world 👏👏👏
We always knew we were great, but it's nice to make it official.
Voting comprised of ONE vote, which we cast ourselves.
It's nice to have a monopoly on search AND voting 🫦
With so much negative press and hate lately, it seems like a lot of the Google accounts have gone into their shell lately.
But don't worry, I'm still here to bring you the unfiltered truth from Google 🤠