Below are the most recent 30 comments. I try to keep it clean of comment spam, but some times things
get through and it takes me several hours to get to it. So please excuse any of that comment spam.
Google Is killing It. Now even the last drops get squeezed out of my Site. It's hard to believe to see some drastic changes happening in the next weeks.
"Improvements to search" - constantly the same self-praise, even though the quality is simply terrible. It always says “Search quality has been improved”. If this was really improved, then it must have been completely bad for 10-15 years.
This circle at Google reminds me of Putin's management team. Nobody is allowed to tell the truth, otherwise heads would roll.
While every SEO at Panda knew what they had done wrong or could improve, there is no solution for those punished by HCU.
So far I haven't seen a single one out of dozens of sites that has recovered from this - despite some extensive changes. If anything, they remain stable at a low level or have disappeared completely.
What about Prabhakar Raghavan? This guy Prabhakar Raghavan is my main interest. He's supposedly the head of it all. I'm sure he's behind most of this nonsense.
As shared by @disqus_W4QnS3jvXN:disqus in another SERoundTable's article:
https://searchengineland.com/liz-reid-google-new-head-of-search-438519
<blockquote><b>Google promotes Liz Reid to head of Search</b>
Cheenu Venkatachary is also replacing Pandu Nayak as lead of search quality and ranking. Cathy Edwards is moving to the Long-term Bets team.
Google is making a number of changes to its executive team running Google Search:
Liz Reid, who was leading up core search experiences, will now be the Head of Search at Google.
Cheenu Venkatachary will be the new lead of Search quality and ranking.
With these changes, Pandu Nayak is stepping down as lead of search quality and ranking and will become Chief Scientist of Search. In another change, Cathy Edwards is moving to the Long-term Bets team in Knowledge and Information.
What Google said. A Google spokesperson sent Search Engine Land the following statement:
“We’re pleased to share that we’re unifying the Search org under Liz Reid – a longtime and well-respected leader at Google with deep product and technical knowledge. We have great momentum in Search, with recent improvements in search quality, new ways to search like Circle to Search, and features using gen AI to help with even more complex questions. For example, SGE, still only a Search Labs feature, has already been used for billions of queries. We’re excited to bring our Search teams together under her leadership.”
Liz Reid. About three years ago, Reid was appointed to lead of core search experience by Prabhakar Raghavan. She will continue to report to Raghavan in her new role as head of Search.
Reid joined Google in 2003. She is credited as one of the earliest pioneers of Google Maps and Local Search and helped Google redefine modern-day mapmaking with AI. Reid was also the first female engineer in the company’s New York office.
Specific to Search, Reid helped:
With Google’s multisearch.
Make authentic, human voices more accessible.
Change perspective filter to forums.
Reimagine how people navigate and understand information with generative AI including Search Generative Experience.
Liz Reid posted on LinkedIn saying, “Today, I’m taking on a new role leading Search, and am humbled by the opportunity to shape the future of this important product.” You can read her full message over on LinkedIn.
Cheenu Venkatachary. Venkatachary will lead the Google Search quality and ranking teams, taking over Nayak’s role. Venkatachary originally worked at Google from May 2013 to December 2014, then left for a company that was acquired by Apple. He returned to Google in October 2022.
Pandu Nayak. Nayak is becoming Chief Scientist, Search, where he will continue to advise and focus on technical challenges in Search. Google told us that he will remain deeply involved in Google’s broader efforts around content understanding, ranking and exploring how new AI technologies can enhance Google Search.
<b>Google credits Nayak as the foremost expert on algorithms, ranking and information systems. Nayak is Google’s most recent inductee to the National Academy of Engineering.</b>
Cathy Edwards. Edwards who led Google Apps, News, Discover and ecosystem efforts in 2021, is moving back to Australia and will join the Long-term Bets team. Edwards, the co-founder of Chomp (which was acquired by Apple) will help incubate new product ideas in partnership with leaders across Knowledge and Information.
Why we care. How this may impact Google Search and overall search quality remains to be seen. Google often makes high-level changes with its executive teams, and people move on. I am sure there will be a lot of speculation on why these moves are being made but overall, it seems like really smart and respected individuals are filling in the roles of those who are moving to other roles within the company.
</blockquote>
And fancy that some of us still thinks Google will "fire the search team for their incompetency". Instead, they are <b>rewarded</b>. What does this tell you? All these crap is gonna stay and probably get worse. And what's despicable is they are promoted when the algorithm is still ongoing and wrecking everything. It is like they know where the core update is going and just conclude it and got rewarded. Also, probably they've hit the Ad revenue objective/records and they're dispensing rewards to them.
Pandu guy is responsible for the algorithm and he is now chief of scientist for search. lol. Cheenu is also now the new leader of Search quality and ranking. What's suspicious about this guy is if you read closely he worked for Google from 2013-2014 but left to work at a company acquired by Apple. Then he left and went back to Google in Oct 2022 but still gets promoted. In other companies when you abandon and come back you're gonna get blacklisted and stuck in a low position forever, but this guy gets promoted instead. Also, just read:
https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/11/11/key-staff-driving-apple-search-engine-leave-to-rejoin-google
And more people from Pichai's village are now in the search team. Who looks if we will see more Indian-based sites that are owned by their friends or relatives getting rewarded in future algorithms.
Good luck.
You can sure gain AMAZING momentum by accelerating while violently tumbling downhill. Lesson learned, thanks ggl.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3d24b30e16816d2952aea658e95cb50f8c776846a3a7949c4f2e954b2b1d2ff6.png
I get that it's a tech company and it's a tech engineering challenge. But you'd think they might have someone with a background in information science in a senior policy position rather than all engineers.
Basically. Google flipped the table and started fresh.
Probably has to do with this being largely user data based. As it constantly runs AB tests on the SERP, there was really no way to 'preview' this ranking scheme...
They just had to roll it out and see what happens.
Since the HCU I have lost nearly all positions of my articles in the Serps. Most of them had a stable and good ranking for years. Today I have checked one of the lost keywords on Google. For that keyword the serp looked like that:
Shopping
Youtube
People also asked
Organic result
People also ask
Organic Resultat
Youtube
Pinterest
People also ask
....
It is terrible. It is hard to read and find something. It was also a German Result...
That's exactly what HCU was targeting (or at least part of it), automatically changing the date of content to pretend that it's "fresh", but not actually changing anything except for the date/year. That's one that for me is a problem, because my site is for airline policies which sometimes get updated but not always, so every year I have to review the policies to make sure my content is up-to-date. When making changes I update the date of the latest revision, but sometimes being up-to-date means changing nothing if the official policies haven't updated, just the date, to show that the policies are still valid in 2024. So I think part of my HCU hit is due to Google thinking that I'm artificially adjusting my dates to seem fresh, whereas I'm actually signaling that the content is up-to-date even though it hasn't changed.... Not really sure what the correct approach here would be? especially that many of the searches include the current year in their search phrases because they specifically want up-to-date information.
Hello everyone, as a content creator from Germany, I would also like to give my feedback.
Until before the HCU update, I had almost the same positions in the top 10 +/- 2-3 on Google and Bing. The traffic share for the search engines was 80% (Google) and 8% (Bing).
After all the updates, the share is now 60% (Bing) and 20% (Google). The shift is enormous, I still have top positions at Bing. Overall, traffic on Bing has not only increased in percentage terms, but also in actual terms.
I can't understand why Google has been turning the wrong screws since KI and re-evaluates all websites, regardless of whether the content (apart from small updates) existed before KI or not.
The relevance of the search results was bad after the HCU update and is now absolutely unacceptable. Large daily newspapers rank with all sorts of topics with their SEO parasite. They have 2(!!!) months to respond to a warning - if they are warned at all (which I largely doubt).
We website owners with specialist sites had no time and were not warned in advance, but were partially deprived of our existence overnight. What Google is causing is the biggest disaster since the search engine was created. Google may currently benefit financially from the poor relevance results, but I am sure Google will pay dearly in retrospect. Many private friends are already dissatisfied with the results and have sometimes changed their search engine.
Google is run by communists.
They hate us because we make money with affiliate links or ads.
They hate us because we are independant and successful, instead of corporate slaves like themselves.
It is a fact, soy latte doesn't work to get ready for the day, hate and greed is what motivates them in the morning!
According to the new Google rules, independent websites that have ads or affiliate links are unhelpful, no matter the quality of the content.
Looking at my portfolio of websites, it is clear only independents who do it for the passion can still rank on Google. I have tried, once you start to monetize a small website, the rankings drop like a rock!
I think they trully believe that if an information comes out of a bigger entity, whether it is a government or coporate website, then it has to be true,and it has to be helpful. Therefore, these websites are allowed to put a ton of ads and affiliate links, be experts on all topics from mattresses to career advice, use AI to steal your content, propagate fake news, do clickbait, it doesn't matter: they are the good guys!
On the other hand, what you publish is automatically unhelpful because, even though you are an expert, you are an independent who did it for the money, therefore you are evil and can't be trusted.
After all, you don't have a big brother representative watching over your shoulder to tell you what you should write.
Only allowed on Google right now: corporate websites, governement websites, social media, independents who don't monetize.
Banned from Google: independent publishers trying to make a living, small businesses.
Glad Elon is putting this latest Google fuckery news in the spotlight today and giving it extra attention.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1769771195035984073
Right. It's the difference between knowledge and information. Google used to value knowledge. Now it's all about information tokens.
Similar situation here. Working professional in the field for over two decades. Hand-written, hands-on everything on my site, exclusively by me. Nothing farmed out to anyone else or any AI. Solid traffic for over a decade. Current information regularly updated, clean mobile-friendly site. And my site has been absolutely crushed.