Recent Comments on Search Engine Roundtable

clone21 commented on Some News Publishers Took A Big Hit With The Google Core Update

What a evil shit, those people even mocking a true president, let's see, time will tell, and these people will pay.

Comment ID #6818833538 01/04/2026 10:05 pm

Dan commented on Some News Publishers Took A Big Hit With The Google Core Update

Can't drop 60% if you're down over 90% already https://media2.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTg5OGZmOWM5d2dhZzR3aWhhNTNxa3hhOXllOHdrNWUyZDh1bzRqOGE3MGJ6NW9sbSZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/hN8BGpsTCdrsPoH3oO/giphy-downsized-small.mp4

Comment ID #6818824719 01/04/2026 09:36 pm

Shawn Powrie commented on Google Questions Need For ccTLDs For Websites To Go International

Happy New Year Barry! I think conventional SEO 'wisdom' would, in many smaller or medium size cases, have the website use just one domain and subfolders if even those are necessary, so as to not dilute the link profile.

Comment ID #6818811634 01/04/2026 08:50 pm

Mark commented on Some News Publishers Took A Big Hit With The Google Core Update

Brilliant, reach near 0 people with email delivery filtering and tell them to use a search engine which is just as bad. If you think thats a good use of your time, then I think it's game over. You're not going to change anything crying how bad or unfair Google is. Either work with it or leave, those are the only 2 options

Comment ID #6818768797 01/04/2026 06:34 pm

SpXmtdd commented on Some News Publishers Took A Big Hit With The Google Core Update

Nah, it's pretty much the same the last few years - near zero.

Comment ID #6818685024 01/04/2026 03:16 pm

Dark Red Owl commented on Some News Publishers Took A Big Hit With The Google Core Update

I used to think like that too until recently. My sites have gone through dozens of updates without a problem and I thought the victims deserved it. In June 2025 my traffic jumped by 30%. I decided that Google was rewarding me. Now it's killed my traffic by 80%. What I see in Discover right now is garbage. I've seen sites that are wonderful thrown away. I don't see the logic.

Comment ID #6818668549 01/04/2026 02:40 pm

Sensei commented on Some News Publishers Took A Big Hit With The Google Core Update

A lot of people are having a rough day. Some worse than others. <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2007845437580169311">https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2007845437580169311</a>

Comment ID #6818622719 01/04/2026 01:01 pm

Finance-guy commented on Some News Publishers Took A Big Hit With The Google Core Update

If anyone here has an email list. Why not try what I have done - add a CTA to every email you send. Here is mine, which goes out to 50K people per week. If you all did it, It might make a little difference. --------------------- Have you noticed Google’s search results are getting worse? Independent publishers like me, are being crushed by Google in favor of big brand advertising money, damaging the web's ecosystem. If my work helps you, please share it with a friend, it genuinely helps keep my research alive. Also, you could try a different search engine, Bing or DuckDuckGo are my favorites. ----------------

Comment ID #6818616919 01/04/2026 12:49 pm

Hunar commented on Some News Publishers Took A Big Hit With The Google Core Update

Ugh, Rough day today. Traffic Dropped by 60% Anyone else seeing the same?

Comment ID #6818612875 01/04/2026 12:41 pm

actualart commented on Some News Publishers Took A Big Hit With The Google Core Update

When will I be able to order your $20-$50 Tai-Chi course?

Comment ID #6818565565 01/04/2026 11:03 am

actualart commented on Some News Publishers Took A Big Hit With The Google Core Update

Those are not news publishers. They are spam farmers pretending to be news publishers.

Comment ID #6818565005 01/04/2026 11:01 am

John A. User commented on Some News Publishers Took A Big Hit With The Google Core Update

Let me guess, the AI Overview are perfect? I mean they've giving correct news etc, if thats the case, proving Google are pushing more to AI Overviews because "they work"

Comment ID #6818480965 01/04/2026 07:25 am

Dark Red Owl commented on Some News Publishers Took A Big Hit With The Google Core Update

Discover and Google news are flooded with spam, fake news, heavy clickbait and copy-paste after the last update. Discover has become a news morgue, and it's also boring. It only has readers because of Google's monopoly on Android and the contract with Samsung and Apple. Google's statements that they have increased user experience are ridiculous. They are spreading garbage worldwide and killing publishers. Whoever came up with this update should be fired.

Comment ID #6818467727 01/04/2026 06:32 am

Dan commented on Some News Publishers Took A Big Hit With The Google Core Update

So sorry to hear that. The drops are crazy. Also experienced a catastrophic drop from that point and have had absolutely zero recovery. All my traffic is just bots from China, an incredible amount of bot traffic for what I have had yet to somehow experience.

Comment ID #6818318199 01/03/2026 07:29 pm

Dan commented on Some News Publishers Took A Big Hit With The Google Core Update

It certainly feels that way and is absolutely heartbreaking to deal with, I cannot see my publication surviving if there's no change for much longer. The incredible drop within 2 hours just shouldn't be normal.

Comment ID #6818317952 01/03/2026 07:29 pm

DataDonkey commented on Google On Why 404s Don't Matter For SEO

<blockquote>To suggest that isn't a negative impact to SEO is somewhat dishonest.</blockquote>Honesty should never be expected from a company that has been convicted of three separate antitrust violations, including Google's loss to Epic Games. These multiple convictions makes Google a true criminal enterprise where even the lowest level pawns in their organization carryout duties to misinform the public in an effort to coverup their habitual criminal acts.

Comment ID #6818296568 01/03/2026 06:27 pm

DataDonkey commented on Some News Publishers Took A Big Hit With The Google Core Update

With digital fingerprinting I'm sure it's easy for Google to disable ads and AI for specific users. Some call it personalized search results, but the purpose is also to misinform/confuse us. What Brin and Page spoke about years ago was gaslighting in its infancy. Today Google has an AI content theft friendly administration in DC. Trump loves AI and frequently uses it to attack his enemies. See the pic below from his Truth Social post yesterday attacking the Illinois Governor. Ivanka Trump also congratulated Google's DeepMind chief earlier in the week for his documentary that received over 200 million views on Youtube. Also was revealed that Greg Brockman, OpenAI's co-founder, donated $25 million to Trump's Super Pac (MAGA Inc.). https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/b9264e6e98096292a568d12099827de994079bea3891f6683c314f10d56feec4.jpg

Comment ID #6818073566 01/03/2026 11:14 am

John A. User commented on Some News Publishers Took A Big Hit With The Google Core Update

That's definitely the case in my niche; they never show any ads. I guess there are no appropriate ads to show, so they can flood with AI Overviews. But if you went to sites in my niche, there are adverts, and if Google sent people there, they would win more. Talking about starting, Brin & Page wrote that ads would sway rankings, but how quickly did they change their mind? Eric Schmidt was called in because investors didn't like B&P, two youngsters being in charge of a billion-dollar company, but if you look at FB, Zuckerberg didn't get the same treatment. Something feels iffy. B&P nearly sold their site for $1 million; can you imagine that? They nearly gave up on the site before it took off. To be honest, they should have made it not for profit but if they'd done that, they wouldn't have got the investment.

Comment ID #6818051643 01/03/2026 10:32 am

Marston Gould commented on Google On Why 404s Don't Matter For SEO

Okay so I've been practicing SEO since before Google started. That's been a minute. I've worked on 100s of large domains - both as an external consultant and as an internal team lead. The websites that I've managed have 100,000s of pages to 10s of millions. I also have a degree in math, have taught statistics and worked at NASA for a decade writing guidance, navigation and control algorithms. So I'm not an idiot. Over these decades since Google launched Google Search Console - particularly after they launched the Pages report, I have been keeping track of the relationship between discovered but not indexed URLs, indexed URLs, impressions, clicks across a wide array of domains: lead generation, ecommerce, media - in a wide variety of industries: travel, finance, insurance, education, retail, automotive, healthcare. Some of these timeseries go back a decade. I can say unequivocally that there is a strong relationship between the level of discovered but not indexed URL, total URLs and peformance measures like impressions, clicks. This isn't to say that other factors don't play, they do, but I can say without a doubt that for scaled websites, if you have a large number of discovered, not indexed pages - particularly 4xx pages, that has a strong negative impact on performance. I'm not saying that 4xx pages should be replaced with 3xx - but I am saying that good SEOs will root out Google from continuously discovering 4xx pages either because they are internally linked to, are part of a redirect chain, can be discovered through crawled backlinks, and a wide variety of other esoteric reasons. For Google to suggest that 4xx links don't matter flies in the face of the page rank patents. Sure I know that page rank has evolved over the years, but at its core, there is still a core principle that discovered (or remembered) 4xx URLs are page rank sinks. To suggest that isn't a negative impact to SEO is somewhat dishonest.

Comment ID #6818014244 01/03/2026 09:18 am

DataDonkey commented on Some News Publishers Took A Big Hit With The Google Core Update

When Google search started they had no ads so they could gain acceptance from users and build dominance by taking away users from other heavily cluttered search engines. Google is doing the same with AI. You probably don't see ads in your niche because Google is making so much money they don't need to spam ads in your niche yet. I'm sure Google has a 5+ year growth plan to dial up the enshitification once Google's AI becomes so widely accepted their competitors fail. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f0590f57432c8a57d2343633bff4d91ea71d338d8fdff4cf68bc5f203407c2af.jpg

Comment ID #6818008449 01/03/2026 09:05 am

Mark commented on Some News Publishers Took A Big Hit With The Google Core Update

Things aren't getting any easier, cheaper, or faster to seo. And Google continue to screw us at every turn. If anyone is sitting here now in 2026 with multiple failures and nothing working, its time to go get a real job.

Comment ID #6817995896 01/03/2026 08:37 am

googleisjoke commented on Some News Publishers Took A Big Hit With The Google Core Update

I get the site to the certain point, leave it, I'm in a good niche, tried various niches, none of them work, this one is very specific and I can make lots of money but only over the long term, that's why I need main thing and this would be the long run guy for little but consistent

Comment ID #6817987507 01/03/2026 08:18 am

googleisjoke commented on Some News Publishers Took A Big Hit With The Google Core Update

yes that's why I won't relly on google

Comment ID #6817986889 01/03/2026 08:16 am

Sam commented on Some News Publishers Took A Big Hit With The Google Core Update

Imagine loosing 2 million users a month for 20 years - and loosing them all apart from a few thousand bots - all due to AI. And, not being able to go get shopping, and face homelessness with disabled children depending on you. This is the stark reality of this insane AI su@acide strategy that google are following. The karma is real. Roll on Q2 earnings, I would like to know how much is being made given no-one is advertising in my niche, and nothing on AI mode or AI overviews on my key terms.

Comment ID #6817946572 01/03/2026 06:20 am

John A. User commented on Some News Publishers Took A Big Hit With The Google Core Update

Bing can do a lot more to help itself, such as degooglising itself. Just look at a BING page for my niche, and you have to wade through a lot of crap to get anywhere. Maybe if they went classic look or made it easy to go classic, then they'd claw people back.

Comment ID #6817915875 01/03/2026 04:34 am

Rowan commented on Some News Publishers Took A Big Hit With The Google Core Update

With all due respect, you (we) know you aren’t quitting, so please stop claiming you are. We all have seen it many times - you kept cursing Google and how your website got affected. But you kept sharing images (hell, you even took the effort to make a GIF image) just to show how much your traffic is. Your claims of “being hit” are just like only 5% or so, while the rest of the community experienced up to 80% loss in traffic. I also remember there's one time you said you sold one of your websites and you only got one left. But, miraculously, you later showed different and multiple GIF images of your website’s traffic. Few months back, I also recall you said you're quitting for good and you're selling your 'last' website but just before the new year you posted a GIF image of your website's traffic growing. So please cut it out. It is getting annoying. It's just humble bragging behind the curtain of victimhood. If you want to boast or share the good news, just do so openly without pretending you're angry and quitting or the "victim".

Comment ID #6817897680 01/03/2026 03:07 am

Sam commented on Some News Publishers Took A Big Hit With The Google Core Update

Check your Google console, I had a good look inside and non-branded traffic has gone from 10000s to a few hundred. Crazy. I think this is the most maddest business strategy for Google as they have lost so much ad revenue from me and there is 0 ads in my niche. AI overviews have 0 ads in my niche. So what's the point, every update they shaved off a bit more and more and more and there is so much fodder above the natural result there is no hope

Comment ID #6817833620 01/02/2026 08:57 pm

Dark OG commented on Some News Publishers Took A Big Hit With The Google Core Update

6 7 nga.

Comment ID #6817820949 01/02/2026 08:09 pm

Luc Wiesman commented on Some News Publishers Took A Big Hit With The Google Core Update

Try 100k a day to 500... yes, 500. Sad times.

Comment ID #6817815475 01/02/2026 07:48 pm

Taryn White commented on Some News Publishers Took A Big Hit With The Google Core Update

It's almost starting to look like this update affected news publishers similar to how the September 2023 HCU hit informational sites in which hardly anyone recovered ever since. In an instant, everything changed and there was no coming back. It didn't matter how good you were, how many years of experience you had, or how big your site was. If that is the case again with this update, sadly many news publisher businesses will end with this new year.

Comment ID #6817808031 01/02/2026 07:19 pm

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