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.
Hacked sites and repurposed domains with thin one click ai generated content paid off big.. I would say 70% of all organic results in my industry is just that now.
Still great ranks after the update and no traffic change as expected because of AI Slop Overviews, Ads and those People Also Piss boxes. It's enshitification at its finest. Only a layout update, to reduce the Googleshit at the top of the page, will allow eyeballs to see organic results.
I just think JD is a swamp rat whereas Desantis is more of a statesman grounded in reality. Both of them served in the military. JD was a journalist, so you think he would care about publishers and their work. Nope. Desantis was an officer. But in the end it may not matter much because the damage is already done. If Democrats sweep midterms next year, that should help check Trump's ability to do the dirty work of his Technocrat buddies.
Maybe it's owned by the USA government? Whatever, the Government may have to force Google to stop AI Overviews, as they will be loosing so much tax revenue, the AI burn and churn is real they can't keep spending 100billion a year if ad revenue is low due to lack of ROI.
Currently in Discover I see 3 of our materials stolen with our titles. We have been kicked out of Discover for unknown reasons What is even more curious is that the sites that steal our publications are in Google News Showcase, a program for sponsoring selected media. Google shuts their mouths so that they do not write that they violate competition law and copyright. Several of the sites in Google Discover and Showcase are on a person sanctioned by the USA under the Magnetsky law for corruption. These sites serve corrupt politicians in our country and additionally Google sponsors and distributes them. I also see several sites in Discover with direct Russian propaganda, sites that are financed by the Kremlin. In our country, the Google coordinator is a well-known businessman, associated with the ruling party for the last 15 years and was even considered a candidate for mayor of the capital. This party implemented all of Putin's geopolitical projects related to energy in our country before the war against Ukraine began.
<blockquote>You always know the day is coming, given everyone else's recent experiences, but you always hold out hope you'll survive just one more core update. Hope everyone else made it through.</blockquote>This industry is now Russian roulette. Some may get lucky for a while longer than others, but eventually everyone gets the bullet the longer you stay in this game.
I thought I would check out what is going on for advertisors over at Reddit and I am surprised what I am reading it's full of advertisers reporting awful performance. It seems that one problem is that Google forced everyone onto AI automation that optimizes for whatever converts, but it is not converting to sales so they have been forced into this AI world and can't manually change anything. One guy spent £2.5k and got no conversions. Go have a read. By keeping AI Overviews, Google is teaching users that "AI answers" are the future. But if ChatGPT gives BETTER AI answers, users learn to skip Google and go over there. What a business strategy wow.
It's not just about the money. This attitude speaks of absolutely self-forgetful people, monopolists, total disrespect for the work of thousands of people who have been part of the ecosystem for decades. They break destinies, they behave like assassins.
It will catch up as Advertisors are struggling to see ROI if you go read the reddit forums. I predict a 70% loss of revenue over Christmas for Google ads. March 2026 after the earnings call they will have to start reducing AI overviews on informational content, the fact is they stopped the "discoverability" of products by removing publishers is what they failed to predict. That is a large chunk of sales and no AI will be able to replicate that shift. I am like 50% revenue down before this last update. I don't even think the income will cover my mortgage. I am in same boat but I know that GOOGLE lost over six figures on my revenue alone, multiply that across millions of websites its not a pretty picture.
I will remember this Christmas for the rest of my life as one of the darkest days of my life. I wish the Google team to have as "happy" holidays as I, my family and my colleagues. I feel sorry for them. These are inhuman creatures. If I hear a young person saying that they will be involved in the Internet, journalism, media, I directly tell them to go to psychiatry. This profession has no future as long as monsters like Google and Facebook exist. Corrupt politicians protect these companies, which are organized criminal groups that must be investigated and arrested.
iGaming results full of hacked domains and expired domain abuse. I’m talking 50% of page 1 results for many terms. Spam and black hat SEO still well and truly beating Google still.
No large changes being seen yet....but of course still keeping an eye. Sites across law, eComm, and local service-based businesses. Things are relatively consistent (knock on wood). Will update if I see anything else popping up.
I could tell it was done, the day Conversions returned, which was exactly the day after Christmas. Traffic is absolutely terrible still, but at least sales are coming in.
Well... I lost over 90% of my traffic during this core update, impressions tanked, I was wiped from Discover, wiped from News and wiped from Search, clicks are abysmal and remain at their lowest since the site's conception, all coming after years of steady growth, slashed in a matter of hours, Hundreds of active users every 30 minutes to 10, 5 of them bots from China now. Sincerely hope it returns, but wouldn't be holding out hope. This is one tough gig, I'll tell you that. You always know the day is coming, given everyone else's recent experiences, but you always hold out hope you'll survive just one more core update. Hope everyone else made it through.
Funny, across my industry, the "digital mulch" continues to outrank nearly anything. It STILL seems as if the amount of content vs. quality content matters.
Kinda ironic that the blog post being referenced talks about how "human writing is more important than ever" and is VERY clearly generated by ChatGPT. It isn't even a good attempt at making something sound human. I'm surprised John even took the time to engage.
And also @codecommander:disqus , Ronnie is all for Congressional limits...
"After his faltering 2024 presidential campaign against Trump, DeSantis has tried to rebuild his standing by promoting congressional term limits and aligning himself more closely with key elements of the president’s agenda."
Sounds ominous that he's aligning himself more closely with key elements of the president's agenda, wonder what those would be though.
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/29/vance-desantis-republican-2028-presidential-contenders">https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/29/vance-desantis-republican-2028-presidential-contenders
</a> As we've seen with JD, they say one thing in the lead-up and another when they actually take office.
I do wonder if the Supreme Court decision on abortion, transferring the decisions back to the individual states, could be applied to Trump's AI Executive Order?
I did read the AI regulation he put forward; they were all common-sense rules.
it's good actually because google will entangle themselves into AI reponses, and they will get so confused what's real, that will be the fun!
Vance totally sold out with his big tech stance prior to the election and secured his position now as just another double-talking establishment bitch. The only chance in hell Vance has beyond this term is if miraculously the economy isn't cooked by 2028.
And it's going to take a true fucking miracle at this point for that not to happen due to the rate AI is eliminating jobs, on top of the unaffordability factor of everything in the already shaky economy propped up by smoke and mirrors.
You're right, both parties suck. Too bad in a free country those freedoms, when voting, are restricted to one of two parties most of the time. Vance lost all credibility with me when he called for Google to be broken up before the election then went around Europe campaigning for Google after he became VP. If Vance runs for President and wins the nomination, he definitely doesn't get my vote.
True on all points.
It's a shitty sense of apathy voting for any of these useless self-serving a55holes at this point, since both parties suck so much.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a2c714d866becc3eb395243779f601aee560be4df6aaa21d8323c1e4c6592239.jpg
Big money sways many, but I think Desantis' political career dwarfs that of Vance who really has none. Maybe Vance shot to the top for being an outsider, but now we see he has no convictions having done an about face about breaking up Google. Desantis, as part of his record, also took Disney on after they vowed to fight his Parental Rights in Education Act.
At this point I'm a single issue voter. I will vote for the people who I think will put Google in check. I don't want to see furry's in stores, but if Trump's assault on small businesses continues then few will have money to go to the stores to spend anyway. It's a real dilemma, so I have to vote with my wallet and hold those politicians accountable for the economic harm they have caused me.
Reddit is also starting to get flooded with Ai generated posts. I now have to mute dozens of Ai related topics every day in my timeline. This kind of overflow of Ai content seems undesirable for Google as well. Reusing Ai generated content leads to a degradation in quality. For example: photos and videos become increasingly less sharp and start to develop a yellowish tint.