Like an ant scrambling to rebuild its home after being stepped on, a small website trying to grab Google’s attention after falling off the company’s search algorithm can feel helpless.
That’s how Brandon Saltalamacchia, owner of handheld gaming website Retro Dodo, has been feeling since last September. That’s when Google issued a major update that once again shifted the balance of how people find information online, a system that’s always been somewhat precarious. The “helpful content update,” as Google calls it, was meant to elevate articles written by humans for humans, weeding out AI-generated articles and spam websites.
Saltalamacchia’s site is one of many smaller websites whose traffic dried up after the update, with some larger outlets seeming to be the major beneficiaries.
“Tens of thousands of independent site owners have now been put into that funnel, and we can’t seem to get out of it,” said Saltalamacchia when I interviewed him earlier this June. “It’s been eight months now. Most of us are all out of cash.”
Since the update, traffic to Retro Dodo is down 90%, according to Google Search results performance data given to CNET by Saltalamacchia. He’s had to lay off his entire staff, except Editor in Chief Sebastian Santabarbara. As of October, Retro Dodo’s traffic remains a fraction of what it was. Saltalamacchia is pouring in his own cash to keep Retro Dodo afloat. It doesn’t help that he’s recently added “dad” to his resume and is now having to juggle a diminishing financial situation and a newborn baby.
His blog post, in which he argues that Google is killing smaller sites like his, went viral among the SEO, or search engine optimization, community earlier this year and has brought him lots of attention. He’s received a barrage of seemingly random tips from SEO experts.
“I don’t know who to believe,” said Saltalamacchia. “And this is the issue of getting these audits and listening to the SEO industry, because nobody knows what’s going on.”
Google currently controls over 86% of the global internet search market and, as a result, it’s how content on most websites gets discovered. Unfortunately, there are bad actors always trying to elbow their way up to the top of Google Search, using underhanded tactics meant to exploit the site’s signals. It leads to a constant back-and-forth between Google’s search engineers, issuing updates and spam sites looking to find workarounds. The prevalence of players trying to optimize for Google Search has led to a degradation in quality results, according to a study by German researchers. This means more time spent weaving through websites trying to find good information online.
Google’s market share saw a slight dip earlier this year, as TikTok and ChatGPT have exploded in popularity. In trying to remain the best place for finding information online, Google implemented generative AI features at the top of search pages that summarize the web’s content in various ways. As Google tries to remedy these issues, regular, and often smaller, websites are getting caught in the crossfire.
Google says that its ranking system won’t be 100% precise, but that it is committed to iteratively improving and seeks feedback. Google also contended the merits of the German study, saying that it looked at a narrow segment of product reviews and that it has since rolled out updates to address these issues. The study does point out that Google has improved and does better than competing search engines.
“We only launch changes to Search after rigorous testing to confirm that a proposed change will be helpful for real people,” said Davis Thompson, communications manager for Search at Google, in a statement. “Our tests and user research have shown that our updates to Search have resulted in more satisfying and useful search results.”
A gladiatorial battle that Google presides over
Writing travel articles requires time, expertise and resources. It’s a field that Nate Hake, founder and CEO of Travel Lemming, knows well. He travels the globe and has a team of local freelancers who lend their expertise to create helpful articles and listicles. Unfortunately, Travel Lemming’s seen a 94% drop in search traffic earlier this year, according to traffic data that Hake shared with CNET. At the same time, Google’s engineers are filling search with more AI features, and it seems they’re actively making it less likely for people to click on Hake’s site.
A screenshot of Travel Lemming’s search traffic data.
One feature of Google’s search engine results pages is called From Sources Across the Web. This feature compiles information from multiple sites and tacks it at the top of a search query. Sites that focus on listicles, like top 10 things to do in Mexico City, are dealing with increasing placement and popularity of Google’s SERP feature, pushing their articles further down the page.
“[Google] just completely upended the whole ecosystem,” said Hake.
A Google SERP example of best things to do in Mexico City.
If dealing with Google’s changes wasn’t already enough of a headache, Travel Lemming’s content is being usurped by spam articles on Google. This spam content is coming from seemingly legitimate websites like the Miami Herald, which Hake alleged, in a December 2023 post, took content directly from Travel Lemming.
Parasite SEO is taking over travel.
This post is AI written & clearly spun in part from our own content. Zero EEAT. Promotes adult sites.
This parasite outranks Travel Lemming’s written by locals & 100% human guides.
Is this what “helpful” means to Google @searchliaison? pic.twitter.com/vjInOnrxEQ— Nate Hake (@natejhake) December 3, 2023
Site reputation abuse, colloquially known as “parasite SEO,” is the practice of using the domain authority of more credible sites to rank certain products or sites higher in search. This involves a smaller site paying a larger site for an article with backlinks to gain a boost in Google’s algorithm. It’s a practice Google cracked down on last month.
According to Hake, the Miami Herald was engaging in AI-assisted plagiarism with backlinks to other products, creating an article similar to Travel Lemming’s and outranking it in the process. Hake said that when he brought it to the attention of Google’s Search Liaison Danny Sullivan, the Herald issued an update and articles from the Miami Herald were removed soon thereafter. Even then, those 404’d articles were still outranking Travel Lemming, much to Hake’s dismay.
The Miami Herald didn’t reply to multiple requests for comment.
Hake feels he isn’t just battling parasite SEO, but also AI-assisted spam sites sucking up online traffic at the expense of content made by real people. One site Hake accuses of using AI is Mother Earth Travel. At first glance, it looks to be a competent website with adequate, if anodyne, writing. Oddly, all content on Mother Earth Travel is written by one person.
An analysis done by Copyleaks, an AI and plagiarism detection software company, at the request of CNET, found that only 12 pages on Mother Earth Travel used AI-generated content. Copyleaks’ president of marketing, Eric Bogard, says it’s possible that Mother Earth Travel is running its content through another software to bypass AI detection software, but wouldn’t go so far as to say the site is engaging in AI-assisted plagiarism. Despite the site’s strong placement in Google Search and its entire suite of articles being authored by one person, the site denies using AI. It said it has a team of writers but uses only one byline to protect their privacy.
“We, by principle and deed, are 100% ‘white-hat’ and don’t take any short-cuts or do anything nefarious (including slinging mud at competitors),” said Shawn Shafai of Mother Earth Travel to CNET in a lengthy statement.
Hake’s situation shows how difficult it is for online creators to make content when they’re being squeezed by Google’s search algorithm, Google’s own AI summary tools and new sites that produce similar content bylined by a single person.
Spam is something Google’s been fighting since its very inception, according to Thompson, and the company issued an update in March to address the latest wave of manmade and automated content abuse.
Review sites can’t escape Google’s algorithm
Gisele Navarro, managing editor at HouseFresh, experienced the repercussions of Google’s Product Reviews Update in late 2023. This update was meant to elevate actual human reviews of products and push down junk content. What this ended up doing was hoisting larger, more established brands and demoting sites like HouseFresh, which work hard to buy and review air quality products.
“We were 15, including full-time and contractors, and we had to immediately just reduce the number of articles that we were publishing and the number of products that we could buy because we just couldn’t afford it,” said Navarro.
According to Navarro’s post, some sites are using their position on the internet to pump out “best lists” — for instance, best air purifiers and best headphones of 2024 — with little actual product testing. BuzzFeed, for example, doesn’t test all products but looks at what people have said in their Amazon reviews and compiles a list. Rolling Stone follows a similar practice for some pieces.
“Because these are very big, authoritative sites in the SEO space, they get to rank really well,” said Lily Ray, vice president of SEO strategy and research at Amsive, a marketing agency. Ray’s been vocal about SEO abuses on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, and has highlighted sites that have abused their position. “Forbes’s ‘the best CBD gummies of 2024’ — they’re literally going to be ranked number one above a dispensary website, right? That’s what people have a lot of issue with.”
Forbes has been the target of site owners and SEO experts as a publication benefiting from its ranking within Google on a wide range of topics, from CBD gummies, to air purifiers and even best pet insurance. Forbes disagrees with critics, arguing it’s simply doing its journalistic duty in giving its readers content they desire.
“Forbes adheres to Google’s policies, and we have not been penalized for site reputation abuse,” said Laura Brusca, Forbes’ chief communications officer, in a statement to CNET. “Our success and visibility reflect the substantial investment we make each year in producing high-quality, expert-written content that aligns with the topics we’re covering and what our audience wants.”
In all fairness, CNET too publishes a wide range of recommendation articles seemingly outside its core tech-focused brand, such as a list of the best solar panel installation companies in Houston (as well as a variety of other cities) and the best meal delivery services. CNET’s product reviews and best lists generate money for the site via affiliate links, which funds our journalism. CNET employs reviewers who adhere to standards of credibility, fairness and editorial independence and follows testing procedures, often in dedicated labs, before making recommendations. Companies have no editorial control over what’s published.
To battle site reputation abuse, Google pushed out a policy earlier this May and one last month. These are manual actions taken by Google in which employees will penalize sites that are abusing their position on the internet to push out low-quality content.
Although HouseFresh’s traffic has gotten better, pleas from Navarro to Google haven’t prompted the turnaround in traffic she was hoping for.
Google invites site owners to break bread but leaves them feeling hungry
After more than a year of outcry from site owners and SEO experts, Google decided it needed to talk to people in person. The company organized a meeting at its offices in Mountain View, California, in late October. It invited sites like HouseFresh, Giant Freakin’ Robot, Travel Lemming and others to discuss, and possibly fix, Search.
The meeting with Navarro and other creators at Google’s California headquarters was confrontational. While Google was apologetic about the affects algorithmic changes had on sites, there was a level of denialism coming from its engineers, according to Navarro.
“Whatever is happening to sites like ours seems like a mystery to them,” said Navarro. “They denied there was some sort of site wide classifier drowning our domains and doubled down on the fact that the algorithm works on pages and not entire domains. However, many of the creators in the room had multiple examples of their sites being clearly shadowbanned.”
Shadowbanning is a term in the social media space meaning to be made invisible to other users. A shadowbanned account still exists on the platform but isn’t readily visible or is pushed down by the algorithm. It’s a more subtle form of banishment that doesn’t outright delete an account but greatly diminishes their influence or reach. It’s often used against bad actors posting negative content or engaging in abusive behavior.
Google had a more positive outlook following the meeting with creators, saying it was an opportunity for open dialogue with creators and finding ways to improve, according to Thompson.
While Navarro found the meeting in Mountain View to be a mixed bag, Joshua Tyler, founder of Cinemablend and Giant Freakin Robot, equated it to a funeral in a blog post about the event. Tyler had a more combative back-and-forth with Pandu Nayak, Google’s vice president of Search, with Nayak denying that Tyler’s site, or any sites in attendance, had been shadowbanned because Google’s ranking comes down to the individual page level.
When site owners pushed back saying their sites were deranked simultaneously over a single night, Nayak was nonplussed, giving confused looks to anyone who disagreed.
“[Google said] without an ounce of pity or concern that there would be updates but he didn’t know when they’d happen or what they’d do,” according to Tyler’s blog post. “Further questions on the subject were met with indifference as if he didn’t understand why we cared.”
Not everyone was as dejected as Tyler and Navarro. Hake from Travel Lemming was also at Google’s creator summit and found the hours of conversations with Google’s Search engineers as helpful. He was less enthused with Nayak’s responses around AI and ultimately believes, like other creators, that it’s best not to assume Google will fix things for creators.
“The Google speakers at the event reinforced that they were there to listen and hear feedback, and that they were very grateful for the ongoing dialogue with creators,” Davis said in a statement when asked if Nayak would like to give a response. “The speakers made it clear that while Google can’t make any guarantees to specific sites, we absolutely look to understand if and how we can do better in surfacing high quality, helpful content for people.”
Tyler announced earlier this month that he’d be shutting down Giant Freakin Robot and would instead focus on the site’s YouTube channel. Saltalamacchia will continue working on RetroDodo but has a new part-time gig with Kagi, a paid search engine billing itself as a private alternative to Google.
“First, they’d have had to acknowledge there was a problem, which they did not,” said Tyler in an email with CNET. He went on to say that the teams within Google, like search and ads, seem siloed and are unaware about how things work in different parts of the company and had to spend time explaining YouTube analytics to some of Google’s engineers. “Further, I also got a clear indication from Google that things aren’t going to get any better, which was in its own way helpful.”
Tyler’s laid off his entire staff and is saddened by the idea that after 24 years of digital journalism, it’d be coming to an end because of Google’s alleged shadowban. At the very least, Google told Tyler that there wasn’t anything wrong with Giant Freakin Robot, which allowed him to stop agonizing over his own actions.
“My hope is that, despite Google telling us nothing will change, all the light shined on the situation by the attendees who were with me at the Google Creator Event may have changed their mind,” said Tyler. “This core update is their chance, perhaps their last chance, to reverse course.”