Disclaimer:
This article is my personal (yes, that is a pleonasm) opinion based on the knowledge, experience, and information I have. Since Google’s algorithm is a black box, it’s an educated guess (like anyone else’s on this topic), nothing more. Also, it is fair to say that I’ve built and run my own and other people’s websites for about a decade, but I’m not a professional SEO expert. The main purpose of this article is to put my thoughts “on paper” (and get feedback or corrections).
A related article on this topic: Is It Google – Or Your Website Sucks?
Table Of Contents (T.O.C.):
- What’s This About?
- Defining The Problem
2.1. It Gets Worse - The Bane of SEO, Affiliate Reviews, And “Niche” Websites
3.1. It Got Worse
3.2. The AI “Threat” - Google’s Reaction (Helpful Content Update – HCU)
- Shoot You In The Back?
- Conclusion – can you rank?
- Update: the Reddit Partnership
- Apendix: Shady SEO offers
1. What’s This About?
Briefly put: Reddit and a few big brand sites (like Forbes) have taken a vast majority of the top search results for most queries.
“Niche” site owners have been raging about this since September 2023 (more about the “niche” later), SEO experts have been pretty loud since October (if not earlier), and by February 2024 even the “normal people” have begun to notice that Google search results have become, well, a bit lacking.
Google still serves well over 80% of all the global searches (all the other search tools combined share less than 20%), so this article concentrates on Google, though there are similar problems with other search engines.
2. Defining The Problem
I’ll use two extreme examples to depict the best and the worst of the current situation.
First, I Googled something I know a lot about: “best bicycle bearing grease” (using a US IP address and the “incognito” browser window). These are the results (click on an image to expand it):
As you can see, the top result is from Reddit, followed by the “People also ask” section, then Bike Forums. Only after that (so you need to scroll your screen) do you see a result from the Hambini’s website (he is an expert in the field).
In this case, the most upvoted Reddit reply (as well as the Bike Forums thread) does provide a good answer (but that is not always the case with Reddit, not for every search, and I’ll discuss that later – while Bike Forums is great for the cycling-related stuff).
After that, there are three YouTube videos. The first one is nonsense (IMO). The second one is by Park Tool – and it’s a good source, though they advertise their own products and don’t mention any cheaper good alternatives. The third video is OK (a big commercial bike-related channel).
Next is a Cycling UK article – well-written and it nicely hits the high points; followed by an Amazon shopping page with general lubricant products, then the BikeGremlin grease article (“best bike bearing grease”), a Quora thread, Bob Is The Oil Guy forum thread, then the more in-detail BikeGremlin grease article (“greases explained in great detail”).
How would I, as an expert in the field, rate these search results?
They are quite good. Objectively speaking. Note that this is a machine, trying to figure out what’s what, and show me the results – without any idea about how much I know (the Cycling UK article for example is short and good for amateurs who don’t want to take the time needed to dive in too deep into the subject, while the BikeGremlin’s second, detailed grease article, is very, very long and in detail).
What is the problem, then?
Apart from the nonsense YouTube video, Reddit and Quora would not be in my top-3 picks/results (at least in my opinion, based on my knowledge and experience on this topic). They are often (though not always, r/bikewrench is quite good generally) a hit-and-miss in terms of cycling & mechanics related questions (especially compared to the BikeForums).
Another tricky thing is that Google takes screen space with “People also ask” and YouTube listings, so what I saw on the first page were only Reddit and Bike Forums links.
Looking objectivelly: Bike Forums, Hambini and BikeGremlin are all great places for bike-related stuff, and at least one of those got to the first page, second place in fact, and that is quite good for a computer, algorithm-run search engine looking though a sea of articles.
If I had to make a “general pick” (i.e. not knowing the exact query beforehand), I’d place Bike Forums first, before my BikeGremlin website. I did write many awesome articles, but not on every bike-related topic, not yet – and I’d be lying if I said otherwise (but I would probably place BikeGremlin before Reddit and Quora 🙂 ).
Other similar but less “salesy” search queries are even better!
“How to set up drop bars,” “seatpost diameters” and similar very specific, very tech. bike-related stuff (I’m researching my areas of expertise here, so yes, it is limited). However, once you get into the potentially profitable searches, it gets more “colourful”…
2.1. It Gets Worse
Unfortunately, it’s not all peachy. To test the commercial stuff from my area of expertise (so I can assess the results), I tried: “good shared hosting provider”.
The first 4 results were the sponsored links:
- BlueHost sales page
- top10.com article named “Best Shared Hosting Provider”
- fastcomet.com homepage
- HostGator sales page
The first non-sponsored (“organic”) result is a pcmag.com article named “The Best Shared Hosting Services for 2024” where “our top 10 picks” lists two EIG-owned providers, and a few other “brilliant” recommendations (for those not in the industry: EIG is utter crap).
Then comes the “People also ask” section full of Forbes articles (and Forbes only as far as I could see).
The second result is forbes.com: “The Best Shared Hosting Services of 2024” – also listing two EIG brands in top ten (one as “Best overall”).
After that comes Reddit, with r/webhosting. Reddit is generally a bit “strange” when it comes to web hosting recommendations (again, my opinion based on my knowledge, information and experience). I wrote briefly about that on my forum. However, the r/webhosting in particular is notorious – this page explains why.
The situation is similarly bad for other “profitable” search queries (at least those from my areas of expertise). Why is that?
3. The Bane of SEO, Affiliate Reviews, And “Niche” Websites
Fact 1: There are enough greedy, unscrupulous people in the world.
Fact 2: Ranking high on Google lets you earn money from automatic website adverts (like AdSense and Mediavine), affiliate sales (using affiliate links), and by using other website monetization options.
Fact 3: Companies have figured out that ranking high gives them “free advertising” (Park Tool bicycle tools company made many great tutorial articles and videos where they show and advertise their products along with the education – and that is one of the less shady/money-grabbing examples, as their tutorials are top-class).
The result is that many people are trying to write articles just to rank high on Google. Even if they know little about what they are writing about, they will try to fake it and put a lot of “keywords” (imagine an article being stuffed with various “bicycle bearing grease” term variations in order to rank for that search).
I know, keyword stuffing no longer works, but whatever the current working “trick” is, “SEOs” will (ab)use it.
When it comes to reviews, the Net is full of bad products listed in “Top Ten XYZ” articles, with the main criteria being how high an affiliate commission is, not the product quality (web hosting reviews are plagued with this, to name one area).
“Niche websites” are a special beast. Shady folks have figured out that you can more easily rank highly in some more specialised/specific areas (niches). Like cycling (LOL), travel blogs, food recipes, etc. The problem is if the person writing articles is not an expert or “at least” a passionate hobbyist sharing their knowledge & experience, but a money-grabbing noob just trying to rank highly and make money.
Of course, such website owners don’t do the work, they hire dozens of “content writers” for cheap to write a ton of garbage they (the hired “SEO content writers”) must google about.
You see where this is going? Yes. Internet is full of utter rubbish, and it is very difficult to figure out who to trust.
Is there a faster, better, cheaper way to make more “SEO content” for ranking high? I thought you’d never ask! 🙂
3.1. It Got Worse
Over the past two years, the Internet got swarmed with AI-written articles. AI can take seconds to write an article, so it can make hundreds if not thousands of articles per day (no limits, not really).
Click on the images to expand them:
Obviously, this is not about helping the visitors, nor sharing knowledge or experience. It’s about making money – at the cost of pilling up the Net with litter.
Can this be stopped?
3.2. The AI “Threat”
This “chapter” is a bit of a digression (you can skip to chapter 4 if you like).
People are getting lazy, with shorter and shorter attention spans (correct me if I’m wrong). I would be very surprised if more and more people don’t just dictate their questions to their phones, and get answers from the AI. The answer could be tailored by the AI to be as brief (or as long) as they prefer, and to match the user’s existing level of knowledge.
This means that even Google could lose to a company with a more powerful AI (though marketing and market position should not be underestimated – if anyone remembers how VHS beat Beta for example).
For website owners, it won’t matter who wins. No one will visit or read websites, just as no one uses Usenet anymore (you don’t know what Usenet is, do you? 🙂 ). They may become a thing of the past.
My use of AI and related ethical concerns.
4. Google’s Reaction (Helpful Content Update – HCU)
Apparently, at the time of writing, Google’s algorithm is not “smart” enough to know everything and figure out the good from the mediocre stuff.
It can figure out the bad stuff easily, but not the mediocre stuff that looks like it’s legit.
Note: Google must be able to do this on a huge, gigantic scale (gotcha, didn’t I? 😛 ). In September, Google tried to deal with all the mediocre-quality spam (that’s what the above-described “niche SEO content” is, basically) and rolled out their “Helpful Content Update” (HCU).
What does it do?
For one, it seems that Google resorted to human help.
Forums and sites like Reddit do have some moderation, and user upvotes and downvotes. Those are often highly questionable, but they are human.
So, to have my article about “best bicycle bearing grease” rank high in 2024, someone must share it in a Reddit post, be allowed to do so by the moderators, and be upvoted by enough American teenage boys Reddit users. The article would still not rank “directly” but a certain percentage of people might click on the link when they read the Reddit post.
- Update, February 23rd:
Based on this article on Google’s blog, Reddit moderators and member upvotes are how articles are ranked (or at least it can very heavily influence rankings, to be more technically correct): “An expanded partnership with Reddit“. - Update 2:
On the same day, Reddit starts the process of selling shares of their stock (“going public” – IPO). - These news seem to confirm my observations (though I can’t know for certain about the “why” – my guess is explained in the paragraphs above).
Next, Google went with the big brands. Like Forbes, yes. The idea is probably that the big-brand articles are at least somewhat curated and that they won’t publish rubbish (as you could see from their web hosting article, discussed in chapter 2.1, that is not always the case).
It also doesn’t hurt that corporations are self-censoring, so it’s all “safe”.
However, at this time, this is as good as it gets. This is the best that we, as a species, are capable of doing with our information at the moment.
Niche sites after the latest Google algorithm updates (click on the images to expand them):
There has been an uproar ever since (September 2023), but it could be argued that the HCU update cleared up a lot of garbage (webmasters: my site was affected too, so read on… before you shoot me 🙂 ).
The “winners” of the update were the above-mentioned big brands (corporate stuff – Reddit, huge publishers, big brands, etc.). Here are some charts of “visibility” on Google for various websites (click on the images to expand them):
5. Shoot You In The Back?
I’ll use my (BikeGremlin) website as an example, because there I have first-hand exact information about everything. Let us start with the BikeGremlin’s Google Search Console performance graph:
As you can see from the graph, BikeGremlin wasn’t decimated with the HCU, but the visit count is roughly half of what it was a year ago (with two abrupt dips and recoveries in between).
Now, I’ll discuss my sites and my credentials. That will sound like bragging, but it has a point.
So, my cycling-related and (this) IT-related websites can be described (as far as I can tell, trying to be as objective as possible) as:
- Articles written by an expert in the field (decades of experience, including professional work in both bike-mechanics and IT fields).
- Articles written for the people – to answer the questions I often get, as best as I can, so that I don’t have to explain the same stuff over and over.
- Articles updated, edited and corrected based on numerous reader feedback (people ask what they don’t understand, I edit the articles, or do complete rewrites).
Reader feedback action example. - Pretty well-written for the most part (based on reader feedback).
- Secure, stable, and reasonably fast.
- User-friendly design UI/UX.
- Almost a decade “old” – with hundreds of articles published long before the AI allowed everyone to spam-print “content” en mass.
Regarding my credentials, you can read hundreds of articles I wrote, watch hundreds of my YouTube videos or read my posts (“bikegremlin” username) on Bike Forums (IMO the best cycling-related forum in the World), 2bike.rs forum (same, in Serbocroatian), or LowEndSpirit (webhosting-related forum where I volunteer as a moderator) to name a few.
I possess a rather interesting combination of skills:
- Knowledge and experience (in two fields of expertise).
- One of my areas of expertise are computers (and very basic technical SEO) – that helps with running a website.
- Great analytical skills.
- Patience and good communication skills – i.e. I can speak and write pretty well, and “transfer” my knowledge to both novices and experts.
- I enjoy writing things down and making tutorials.
I know my websites and YouTube are surely not the best in the world, but they are what Google says it wants to see in the top results:
Expert-written stuff, for the people (not for “SEO”), with good quality.
Despite that, the latest Google update did sort of “punish” my sites as well. The traffic isn’t down to zero, but it’s basically cut in half as far as I can tell. That’s after almost a full decade (since 2015) and hundreds of high-quality articles (again, based on reader feedback) – published long before the AI allowed you to spam articles.
For a more detailed (and objective & self-critical) discussion on this, see my article: “Is It Google – Or Your Website Sucks?“
Can a less computer tech savvy person write about something they know a lot about and start ranking high on Google? A “normal” person can write about one high-quality article per month, unless writing is their job. Will it be possible to find good, high-quality information from small, independent, hobby websites? I don’t know for sure, but it doesn’t seem possible. Not anymore. Internet seems to be moving towards a walled garden and “pay-to-win” game.
I discussed this a bit further in chapter 6: “Conclusion – can you rank?” I also touched upon this (in a very broad sense) here: .com price hike – where is the Internet going?
Can we blame Google for this?
They are probably doing their best, but the good old human greed and stupidity is making it very hard to discern the jewels from the sea of “SEO spam.” No other company can do it better at this time, not really (don’t get me started on Bing – LOL 🙂 ).
Yes, there are also Google’s profits and marketing in play, but that doesn’t mean Google isn’t trying hard to make the search provide the best, most useful, most helpful results. Crappy search results for a search engine are like shooting yourself in the foot.
According to this article by Edward Zitron, Google did deliberately make their search results worse – and have been doing so since 2019: “The Man Who Killed Google Search.” It is very well written and informative, I recommend it.
6. Conclusion – can you rank?
To get any justice in a court, you must hire (pay) a lawyer. No way to represent yourself and “win” because of the numerous technicalities. Similarly, to rank on Google, you need to pay a good (and very expensive) SEO agency.
You can’t “just” be an expert in a field and write well. Nope. Doesn’t cut it. There are countless technical aspects about running a website itself (CLS, LCP, mobile-friendly etc.), along with even more technical SEO aspects.
And that’s just for the “on-page SEO!” In addition to that, you need to get links from “reputable websites” and apparently it’s not enough to write high-quality articles to get that – you need to pay (though many don’t admit that – you either pay directly, or pay an agency with a high influence to give you favours).
This is not possible for a non-profit, non-corporate site. If you aren’t making a lot of money, you’re done. Yes, Google keeps saying the opposite, but that’s not what it’s doing.
I wanted to write down my thoughts and observations as a hobby webmaster (I don’t live from my websites, nor do I work as an SEO expert). I’m curious to hear your thoughts and experience regarding the way things are moving.
As far as BikeGremlin is concerned, I plan to continue writing about the stuff I work with or the stuff that people often ask me about (I call these the “self-defence” articles, as they let me just copy/paste a link and save myself the time 🙂 ). So: mostly business as usual. Maybe Google will figure it out eventually (as it had before the HCU update). Probably not. 🙂
7. Update: the Reddit Partnership
A day after I published this article, I read the news about Google’s partnership with Reddit (and Reddit’s IPO). That didn’t come as a surprise for reasons explained in chapter 4.
However, a few days after that, I read a tweet about Google’s Gemini AI “performance”. I wrote about that in chapter 5 of my “Freedom of speech and science” article. As far as I can see at this point, another reason for the Reddit partnership could be the Reddit’s user agreement:
When Your Content is created with or submitted to the Services, you grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable, and sublicensable license to use, copy, modify, adapt, prepare derivative works of, distribute, store, perform, and display Your Content and any name, username, voice, or likeness provided in connection with Your Content in all media formats and channels now known or later developed anywhere in the world. This license includes the right for us to make Your Content available for syndication, broadcast, distribution, or publication by other companies, organizations, or individuals who partner with Reddit. You also agree that we may remove metadata associated with Your Content, and you irrevocably waive any claims and assertions of moral rights or attribution with respect to Your Content.
Reddit’s user agreement
Based on this:
- If Google’s Gemini AI copy/pastes (with or without paraphrasing) some text from BikeGremlin, they just might (if I had enough money) get themselves into a copyright court process.
- However, if Google’s Gemini AI uses any Reddit post contents (with or without editing, altering, in its entirety or just a part) to answer queries, they needn’t worry if they made their Reddit deal to cover that (Reddit’s user agreement gives the Reddit company all the copyright claims and rights to everything anyone ever wrote on Reddit).
So, this looks like a great way to have users work for free for the large corporations. 🙂
The next logical move would be for Reddit to either ban or “strongly discourage” any external link sharing – as is the case with StackExchange already. Until that ban (hard or “soft”) takes place, I would expect Reddit to be swarmed with “SEO link” spam.
8. Apendix: Shady SEO offers
I almost forgot to mention the shady SEO stuff that seems to still work (unless the numerous SEO agencies are doing it just for fun – LOL). I’m talking about folks who offer money or “A-B-C” link exchanges for links on my website.
That looks like poor quality, shady stuff, so I decline such offers, but I’m getting them on a regular basis. Here’s the latest example (less than an hour ago):
See those links? I’m not sure how to check and confirm if it’s all one (ghost) writer or even one agency. You are free to dig in if you like. You could also check to see how they rank (they seem to rank high at the time of writing).
