Before I knew HCU existed
So I went to Fiver and booked an appointment to have my site disavowed which prevents certain content from getting picked up through Google. I had somewhat duplicated content but this was mainly to update/expand previous articles so yeah that too was also a bust.
I can't recall when I discovered Google was the problem as I was focused on saving Insidus and at that point I was blowing my budget. In one of those encounters a phrase came up "Google Has Killed SEO" so when searching for that you come across a number of individuals with similar experiences as mine.
The introduction of HCU
It was through these experiences that I learnt of Helpful Content Update (HCU) which traces back to September 2023 for most of those individuals. This was basically a algorithmic update that targeted spam and low quality websites and the result came at the price of the livelihoods of several publications.
There was even a whole brawl between affected sites and SEO experts blaming our ads (which are provided by Google BTW) and content. Some of these sites to have been hit range from travel, fashion, gaming and entertainment so for SEO experts to target us was a bit of an overstatement.
Firstly, there's several big publications already breaking Google and SEO guidelines one of which was to not have an ads/malware pop up like it forms part of the website. Some of these so-called experts were quick to justify to level the corruption and use their size as a defence mechanism to get a free pass.
Getting to the problem
In October, Google hosted a creators summit where 20 HCU affected publishers attended in the hopes to get some closure or at least some clarification on where Google stands as far as independent publication gets. The answer let's put it like this let's say you're going on a vacation and you have the one briefcase.
You can't take the whole wardrobe but only essentials you'll most definitely rely on this is where big brands stand over independent publishers.
It was made clear that my content and the ads curated by Google themselves wasn't the problem so who holds more power here SEO experts or the ones in charge of the problem in the first place (being Google). Being encouraged to continue making helpful content is difficult if your resources are limited and Google rewards those who steal them.
If I had to guess thousands of sites like mine where hit with this it may have to do with the rollout of Gemini, Google's attempt at being an answering machine. To top it off, an "improved version" is coming in 2025 most probably to kill off more websites from readers grasp.
To those who aren't being affected, ask yourself is Google doing you any favours by referencing cause if you were the malformed website why should I care about your existence if Google exists. Besides, Google was ousted for "stealing" images and there's AI infused search engines compensating publishers (Google is not one of them).
If 2024 has taught me anything don't put all your eggs in Google's baskets luckily I have a following on other platforms but sadly a large part of it is from Google so screwed anyway. Even if Google had to rewrite their wrong the trust has been broken from the September 2023 update or for me by June 2024.
At that time, I lost over 50% of my traffic and further updates led to an increase but not at the scale post HCU. As for my audience, most of the content is catered for South Africa yet they don't form the top 3 or 5 countries not even the rest of Africa it's mainly France, Hong Kong and European markets.
So how is Google able to get this audience into Insidus is unknown to me if all the keywords I ranked out even the global ones are dead.
I don't care where my audience comes from I'm glad to know there's people out there who care but if you're a running Marvel based website you are expecting a majority be Marvel fans but this is not the case. I can't just change my content if the current setup yields results something so called experts tell publishers.
Conclusion
As I brace for 2025, I will be making some minor changes to how things are run on this website getting it platformitized. Those following me and reading up on my stories know of some of these developments building up YouTube channel, merging Insidus Plus here and finding more sources of income.
Shutdown plans aren't underway as blogging has always been a coping mechanism for me built it with the little I had and can try to recover from that again.
Other publishers also hit with HCU
Giant Freakin Robot: The End Of Independent Publishing And Giant Freakin Robot
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